An excerpt from "The Vice-Principal" taken from Houshang Moradi-Kermani's collection Qesehaye Majid (The Stories of Majid).

The kids had turned the classroom upside down when the vice-principal, all charged up, stuck his head in the door:

"What's going on in here, Jackasses?"

The vice-principal as usual was holding a switch in his hand and was the very picture of Jack the Ripper, all mean and stern. As his voice boomed in the classroom, the kids flew like frightened mice from the blackboard and the nooks and crannies of the classroom and stuffed themselves back in their seats. In a jiffy, the screaming and yelling and pell-mell subsided. The vice-principal came into the classroom and stood just inside the doorway. He cast a harsh and bitter glance on the kids who were performing their best imitations of poor and innocent little lambs, and said:

"What do you have this period?"

"Composition, Sir."

"Who is your teacher?"

"Mr. Hosseini. They say he's been transferred and isn't coming anymore."

"All right, shut up then and do your work. If anyone makes a sound, I'll come and paddle him until he's black and blue."

"May we go outside, Sir?"

"No. Get your asses back in your seats right now. I'll be right back in a moment to take care of you."

He left to make the rounds of the courtyard, look in on the classrooms and inspect the premises once before coming back. No sooner had he put one foot out the door when the classroom again turned into a flea market. The hollering and commotion of the kids rose to fill the air. They flew out from behind the desks and started climbing up each other's head and shoulders, onto the door and up the walls. Bits of chalk, erasers, watermelon seeds, date pits, pens and notebooks started flying around the place hitting the kids in the back of the neck, on the forehead and eyes and ears. The foulest of swear words were being launched from every direction. The sound of galloping hooves and crash landings onto desks and benches resounded in the classroom like a herd of mules and plumes of chalk dust filled the air.

A few of the children sounded the false alarm, "The vice-principal is coming." But he didn't come and didn't come.

When he did finally come, the period was just ending. At the back of the classroom, two of the boys were wrapped up in their own wrestling match.

"Again you've started up, you Jackasses!"

The wrestlers had clamped onto each other's thighs and forelegs with the grip of a lobster. They kept straining and had become the color of cooked beets. The voice of the vice-principal did not make it into their ears. As the two friends were thus occupied, Sir came up behind them whereupon his hand got down to work.

He delivered seven, eight, ten hearty counts of the switch to their arms and legs and just below their fannies until their arms and legs went completely limp and they let go of one another.

Tails between their legs, they jumped back in their seats.

The vice-principal laid his switch on the teacher's desk. He flared his nostrils once and went up to the board.

He took a piece of chalk and on the board he wrote:

"Who Renders the Greatest Service to Mankind?"

"This is the subject of the composition for next time. Write it and bring it to class. Anyone who doesn't do the assignment, woe upon him!"

"Sir, you aren't going to tell us more about it?"

"It requires no further explanation. It's in fact, very simple. Just write your own opinion. Who serves people the most? Teacher, doctor, soldier, businessman, worker, merchant... In short, whoever, it strikes you, does the greatest service for men and society. It's completely up to you."

"Are you yourself going to take our class?"

"Yes, I myself am coming. Now, go quietly out in the yard."

It was as if the cage door had opened. The kids flew into the yard flapping their wings.

I was standing in front of the class reading my composition aloud from my notebook. The classroom was silent and no one dared breathe. Only from time to time, the sound of a lone cough or psst-psst or hee-hee could be heard from the periphery. The vice-principal was sitting in his chair. He had his switch on the table in front of him at the ready. He was sucking on hard candy and slurping noises were continuously being emitted from under his thick mustache. He was a notorious smoker. He'd recently laid his cigarettes aside and had taken up hard candy eating in order to free himself from the habit of smoking. Whenever he got the craving for a cigarette he would toss a few pieces of candy down the hatch instead.

I was reading my composition with gusto and dramatic flourish and my voice was resonating throughout the classroom:

Yes, in this great world of ours, all men toil and their work is a benefit to the welfare of society. Doctors treat the sick, engineers draw up building plans and teachers make the children of men literate that in the future they shall not grow up blind and ignorant. Soldiers fight in wars and do not allow cold-blooded, godless enemies to lay a hand on our wealth, honor and dear country. Police go without sleep all night and catch thieves and lead them to jail. Likewise, the grocer, spicer, shoe-maker, carpenter and blacksmith each serve mankind in some way.

For most of us students still in school, our parents have the expectation that we will become doctors and engineers and be respected members of society. And if it turns out that we can't get so far in our studies, we become teachers. And if we should give up learning halfway through, either because our parents can't afford to send us another year or because we acted lazy, then we go into business. Now business is a good thing. Society has a need for businessmen. Laborers too, for their part, work especially hard. Most of our fathers are in business or are laborers and are proud to be so. Thus, we can not say who is the one who renders the greatest service to mankind.

However, if we think a little, we find there is someone in this society who serves men much. He puts in an abundance of effort and if one day he should turn his back or not be there, no one would be willing to perform his job and then we'd all become helpless. Yet despite all this, we don't like him at all and he takes no pride in his work. We all flee at the sight of him and if, God forbid, one fine morning our glance should fall on him in some back alley or on the avenue, we would block our eyes and immediately turn around and get off the streets and go home or to our job. Yet, no one can be found who does not, sooner or later have need of his services.

Yes, it is the town body-washer who, in my opinion, more than anyone, renders the greatest service to mankind.

When I got to this point, some of the kids couldn't contain themselves and started cracking up and the classroom was overtaken by whispers. The vice-principal struck the desk hard with his switch, "Whack!"

"Silence!"

Then, turning to me:

"Read! May God silence your tongue, once and for all."

I read:

Yes, it is the town body-washer who in my opinion serves mankind most. Because no one praises him and however much he may be the biggest expert in his work and wash the dead body well and wrap a shroud around it, one does not give him a prize nor applaud him. At no time or place has anyone ever seen it written in the newspaper, "We are thankful to so-and-so, the body-washer who washed our father nicely." Or have you ever seen that when a certain body-washer who has worked hard and gained some expertise in his work, they give him more pay and his business becomes brisk and his clientele increases?

All of us who have gathered together in this classroom and are in pursuit of knowledge and learning, whatever else we may become, we don't want to become a body-washer. In fact, we are afraid of body-washers. Now, for us who are children, we will say nothing. But even my grandmother whose age is advanced and who dreams of the dead every night and even has a shroud which was brought back as a souvenir from Karbala for her and which she's put in the bottom of her trunk and sometimes checks up on and even sleeps in, even she is afraid of the body-washer. A short while ago, she happened to catch sight of Leila, the body-washer in the market and immediately turned her head away and pulled my hand and said, "Let's go fast, Majid." But Leila ran up in front of her and said, "How are you, Bibi?" Granny responded to her greeting with a curt, "Not bad," and ran into a side-street with me in tow. Whereas she could have warmed up to her a little and, during the conversation casually dropped the request that when, if God wills it, after 120 years when she's gone to the other world, Leila please wash her well. However, while Granny had imagined that when Leila had asked how she was doing, she'd been checking out business prospects and wanted to find a customer and see when the matter of washing Granny was going to yield cash so that she could start thinking how to spend it. Or she'd use it as a favorable promise of payment to the debt-collectors. Granny was not at all thinking that everyone asks after each other's health and poor Leila too, like everyone had asked, "How are you doing, Granny?" Yes, until sunset that day, the color had clean gone out of Granny's face and she kept murmuring prayers under her breath and blowing the air around her to ward off evil.

But, this same Granny, whenever her eyes happen to fall on the doctor, do you think she so easily lets him go? She suddenly remembers all her pains and diseases and she goes on yapping so much about them the doctor flees from her. Thus we see that everyone fears the body-washer.

I looked out of the corner of my eye. I saw the vice-principal was furiously having a go at one of the hairs of his mustache and was struggling to pull it out by the root and instead of sucking the hard candy a little at a time, he was chewing it in a frenzy. The crunch-crunch of hard candy chewing was loud as was the sound of the switch smacking against the desk.

God knows how upset he'd become. The children were grinning from ear to ear and laughter was choked up in their throats. Whenever one of them couldn't contain it and exploded with laughter, the vice-principal would give a hard whack on the desk with the switch.

"Shut up, let me see what stinking load this jackass has dumped with this composition of his."

I got really frightened. I said:

"Sir, you want me to not read anymore?"

"No, go on, read that nonsense so everyone will see how much of a stupid idiot you are! Read!"

"Yes, Sir."

 So I read:

In order to write this composition, I went and made some inquiries here and there about the life of Kal Asghar, the body-washer and his wife, Leila, the body-washer. I found out the store-keepers don't like to sell goods to them. When they see those hands, they are frightened since they know that one day those hands will wash their own lifeless body and that of each of their family members. Every time Kal Asghar, the body-washer gets on his bicycle and goes for a ride around town, policemen turn their heads away in order that they not see him. Even if he commits an offense, they don't fine him. He has two daughters who are -- and if you will, I mention them here only as sisters -- right at the marriageable age who radiate beauty like the full moon. However, no one comes to take their hand. Up to now, no one has even seen anyone inviting them to a wedding. Just imagine what it would feel like to be at a wedding and the body-washer is right there next to you. Would you be able to feel comfortable eating the fruits and sweets and wedding dinner? Certainly, I wanted to go over to Kal Asghar, the body-washer's and ask lots of questions and include them in my composition. However, I was afraid of him. Even though it's a small town and everyone knows his body-washer, still, few people have any real details about them. Everyone just avoids them. They themselves, of course, know all these things but are polite enough to pretend not to notice and just go on practicing their trade expertly washing the dead. Thus, they render a greater service to man than anyone else. Nor do they expect much from anyone. While in retaliation for this unkindness, they could give a few good kicks to the ribs and abdomen of anyone in town who dies, or at least give him a pinch when the next of kin isn't looking and thereby unload some of their pent up grief. The dead person also, what with his condition, can't exactly start screaming and shouting and swearing and saying, "Ouch."

 Now please compare him with the bath attendant at the public bathhouse. Since we are alive and talk with him and engage him with a warm, "How do you do?" in the by-lanes and streets and as long as we can afford it, we show no restraint in giving him a tip, despite this, when he's giving us a rub-down, it seems he's making us pay our father's debt. The way he puts so much force into rubbing the scrubbing-pad and scrapes so hard into the delicate skin of our bodies you'd think he wants to remove our hide completely. For a few days, the place where he rubbed really burns. And when he massages, he yanks and twists our arms so much that one would think he was a butcher and has a predilection for tearing apart the thigh bones of a cow. And when he applies the soap to our heads for the shampoo and rubs it in, he tugs at our hair with such a vengeance that our "Ow's!" echo throughout the bathhouse. And in the same way, we fear that due to the sheer, overpowering force of his strong paws which bend our necks to the left and right, little-by-little our necks will become loose and will come out suddenly from between our shoulders, and our head will remain in his hands and our body will fall on the floor of the bathhouse.

As we know, the body-washer never does this to a corpse and this is where it becomes evident for us how forbearing and kind body-washers are. But never mind all that! Still, with the sting of our tongue we torment the body-washer and shower snide remarks on him. For example, any time we see someone who looks a little odd and his clothes are mismatched and his hair is disheveled and his complexion is pale and around his eyelashes there is rather a lot of gunk and drool is dripping out of the corners of his mouth and he's got a nasty disposition, we say, "He looks just like a body-washer," and this is totally unfair since our very own body-washer has a proper black hat and coat which appear to have once belonged to some affluent person. And as opposed to many of the people of this town, he isn't grouchy and there is always a sweet smile engraved on his lips.

In short, we don't pass up any opportunity to inflict evil on the body-washer. Yet he, with complete patience and forbearance and self-sacrifice and pleasant demeanor, nicely washes and shrouds all the people of the town, one-by-one from doctor to teacher, grocer, office-worker and policeman. He holds no grudge in his heart for anyone. He wouldn't hurt even an ant nor has he any expectation of respect and commendation from anyone. Therefore, we should conclude that...

Suddenly, the back of my neck was stinging, my tongue froze in my mouth and my notebook fell out of my hand.

I looked up and saw that while I was deeply engrossed in reading my composition, the vice-principal had come up on tip-toe upon me and was now swatting me with the switch. The kids had put their fear aside and unleashed their laughter into the classroom. The vice-principal laid another one on the back of my neck with his switch. His face had turned black as coal. I stood staring at him at a complete loss. He was about to explode from anger. The two ends of his mustache and the flaps of his nostrils were shaking. He had a fat and fleshy face with hanging skin. Whenever he'd get very upset, the skin of his face used to form rolls and the rolls of flesh would take on a life of their own. His eyes had become the size of two bowls, huge and bloody. He turned to the kids:

"Shut up, shut up, Jackasses!"

The kids swallowed their laughter. The class quieted down. I bent over and picked up my notebook which had fallen on the floor of the classroom. I said:

"May I sit down?"

"No, stay right there, I have business with you."

I ran my hand over the back of my neck which was burning something terrible and said:

"I think it would be much better if I sat down, Sir. Seeing as how my composition is over. And then since you have already given me my beating, there's nothing much left to do. Why not let someone else come and read his composition?"

The vice-principal stared unblinkingly at me and chewed on the tip of his mustache.

"You're trying to turn the class into a circus, aren't you?"

"Me? Me, dare do such a thing...?"

"Yes, you. In my classroom, clowning around. I'll teach you a lesson on clowning around that you'll remember as long as you live."

"What clowning around, sir?"

I was shaking like a leaf. It dawned on me and there could be no denying it: I was done for. He said:

"What was that garbage that you read?"

"My composition. I wrote it and read it."

He raised the switch up and then lowered it very hard. This time, instead of the back of my neck, the switch struck me in the face. It didn't hit me in the eye, thank God, it hit me on the lip. The switch was slender and flexible. It wrapped around my head and went all the way around and hit me in the ear lobe setting it on fire.

"What...that the body-washer does the greatest service to mankind? Is this how to write a composition? May the body-washer come and cart your ugly face out of my sight. Who wrote all this nonsense for you?"

"I wrote it myself. I'm good at literature."

"To hell with your literature."

My hands were shaking. My lips had gone dry. My ear was burning. I said:

"You said, 'You are free, write whatever you want.'"

"So that means in your opinion, Jackass, no one does more for people than the body-washer? You mean, doctors and teachers and shoemakers and brick-layers are useless?"

"I didn't say they're useless. I said all of them are good, all of them perform a service."

"But you wrote, 'The body-washer does the greatest service.'"

"Yes, I agree I did write that. But since people don't like him, they even tease and bother him. But he doesn't hold it against them and still goes on serving people."

The vice-principal sat down on his chair. If there was any time he deserved a smoke, this was it. However, instead of a cigarette, he took some hard candy out of his pocket and tossed it into his mouth.

Instead of sucking, he chewed it in a mad frenzy, "Crunch, crunch, crunch." His mouth might have sweetened up a bit however his mood remained as bitter as before. He said:

"Was your father a body-washer?"

"No, sir."

"What about your grandfather?"

"Not him either, nobody in our family was ever a body-washer."

"Do you yourself, when you grow up want to become a body-washer?"

"No sir, I myself am afraid of the body-washer."

"What do you want to become with this defective brain of yours?"

"Whatever God has planned. However, mostly I wish I could become a writer."

Notwithstanding the foul mood and the all-consuming anger, all of a sudden he gave a laugh. His dirty, yellow teeth which had so long ago become completely ruined from all the cigarette smoke emerged from under his mustache.

His laughter was bitter but soundless. He stuck his hand in his pocket and took out two big pieces of candy which were stuck together and stuffed them in his mouth and chewed, "Crunch, crunch, CRUNCH." I said:

"Shall I sit down, Sir?"

"No, I'm going to make a human being out of you today. So, you say you want to become a writer, eh?"

"Yes, Sir. God willing."

"Pity your poor readers! A writer should have a gentle soul and talk about roses and plants and moths and love and kindness and forgiveness and self-sacrifice; not about body-washers and grave-diggers and such things."

"I also talk about kindness... forgiveness..."

"Kindness? Of the body-washer, I bet! And I suppose you read books, too?"

"If I can manage to get them, yes."

"Have you read the books of Sadeq Hedayat?"

"I read one half-way but I didn't understand anything. I gave up."

"He always writes about body-washers, hearse-drivers, the dead and these sorts of things. Have you read these things?"

One of the kids in the back, in order to cash in on the situation, stoked the fire a bit:

"He reads all kinds of books, Sir."

The vice-principal shot back at him:

"Shut up, no one asked you anything."

My ear-lobe was burning. I rubbed it. The tip of my finger became bloody. I wiped off the blood with my thumb.

"Sir, shall I sit down?"

"No. You haven't said what your purpose was in writing this trash."

"Actually, to tell you the truth, I wanted to write something that would be new. Something no one had ever thought of. I knew everyone else would write about teachers and doctors and soldiers and these kinds of people; I didn't want my composition to be like theirs."

"So why didn't you go after, for example the gardener, the farmer? Do they not work hard? In cold and in heat, they plant the wheat. The wheat becomes bread and you, Jackass, stuff that bread into your damned stomach."

"What you say is completely true. However, no one dislikes the farmer. They say, 'Don't work too hard! Keep up the good work. God-willing, your crops will be plentiful.' But no one tells the body-washer, 'God-willing, your business will become brisk and you'll get a lot of customers.' While this same farmer in the end will have to do business with the body-washer."

The kids had unbottled their laughter. The vice-principal turned red. He stuck his hand in his pocket and took out some candy and threw it in his mouth and chewed it:

"So you always have a ready answer?"

"Please let me sit down."

"No, wait. You wrote that nonsense on purpose so that the kids would laugh and you'd disrupt the class. Or else you wanted to make a fool of me. This was precisely your intention wasn't it? I myself have studied and grown up in schools and classrooms just like this. You can't pull the wool over my eyes. Your intention was to make a fool of me, wasn't it?"

"No, I swear to God I had no such intention. Okay, yes, I did wrong. May I sit down now?"

"Is this the kind of nonsense you always write instead of compositions?"

"It depends on the composition... on the teacher."

"If the teacher is a simpleton and can't defend himself do you, Jackass, then make a fool out of him?"

"No, Sir."

"Then what then?"

"If a teacher should say to the class, 'You're free to write whatever you please,' I go around looking for something fresh and write that. I don't copy from books like the others."

"I suppose if you were to write juicy swear words and insulting language, that would be fresh...?"

A drop of warm blood dripped from my earlobe onto my neck and found its way down my collar. With the palm of my hand, I wiped it and said:

"Swear words are not to be written, I guess."

"Why not?"

I started to falter.

"Sir... may... I... ple-plea-se... sit down?"

"No, stay right there. I'm not done with you."

"Since you gave me what was coming to me, what is the need to keep standing here?"

"Since you want to become a writer, let's see when it's possible to write swear words and dish them out to people."

"As far as I know, it's possible to write swear words in stories. Although not just any swear word."

"For example?"

"For example, some swear words which aren't dirty, you can have them coming from the mouth of a character in the story in order to show that that character hasn't had a good family upbringing and can't control his tongue."

"Can you give an example? Give us a swear word that can be written."

My tail had been caught in the trap in a bad way. I couldn't think of any example that could be said, and that too, in the classroom. Every swear word that came to mind was dirty. All the bad swear words of the world had come into my head. However, show me the guy who would dare open his mouth in front of the vice-principal and let out one of those!

The vice-principal was staring me right in the eye. He was chewing the end of his mustache. I avoided his eye and looked at the ground. He'd gotten up. The switch in his hand was dangling like a baby snake. The vice-principal was hoping to God that I would let out a swear word and then he would rearrange my head and shoulders. I said:

"Sir, may I sit down?"

"Give a swear word, then you can sit down."

"I don't know any."

"You say that and expect me to believe it? You have to give a swear word. Even if the bell rings, I'll keep you standing here. Did you think there was no one who could straighten you out?"

The class was so quiet that if an ant had crawled up the wall, the sound of its feet would have been audible. The kids just sat there watching the whole time. Forty or fifty pairs of eyes. I guess they were waiting for me to say a swear word and watch how the vice-principal would beat the living daylights out of me. Perhaps they were even wishing to pipe up with a few suggestions themselves. However they didn't dare and were waiting for me to be the one to do their dirty business. They'd sit back and, from the comfort of their own seats, safe and sound, have the satisfaction of watching my downfall without any risk to themselves.

The vice-principal became extremely angry at my having gone mute. He raised the switch and said:

"Give us a swear word, Jackass!"

Suddenly, something sparked in my mind. Pleased with myself, I didn't stop to think. I blurted out:

"Jackass."

The vice-principal cried out:

"What?!"

"Yes, Sir. "Jackass" is a good, respectable swear word. Not too dirty and conveys the personality of the character as well. It can be used in a story."

He took it personally. He got offended. I hadn't bargained on this. Things had gone very wrong. If only I'd given an indecent swear word and not said "jackass!"

Nor did the vice-principal fail to rise to the occasion. Instead of the switch, he raised his foot and gave me a hard kick in the bladder. I almost fell to the ground but I caught myself. Pain seared through my side. He wanted to rip off my head. He forced his voice into a low growl.

"So you mean I'm uncivilized then, Ja...ja...jacka-a-a...?"

He swallowed the rest of his words. I held onto my side.

"Sir...Sir I swear by the life of my Granny, I didn't mean anything. I couldn't think of any other swear word which I could say in front of you."

I didn't think things could get any worse when I heard someone open the door. Mash Reza the custodian of our school stuck his head in:

"Sir, shall I ring the bell?"

The vice-principal grating his teeth said:

"Ring it!"

Mash Reza left. Sir took my composition notebook from me.

"You need not come to school tomorrow. Tell your parents to come and pick up your school file. They can send you to whatever the hell place they want."

"Ding-aling-aling!" The bell went off. The kids broke up the class. The vice-principal went outside. My composition notebook was in his hand. I ran after him.

"Sir... Sir...please forgive me, I won't write these sorts of things again. What should I do now, Sir?"

"I told you to tell your parents to come to school."

"I don't have any parents, Sir. I have a grandmother who, may such a thing not happen to you, suffers from pain in the legs. She can't come."

"If no one can come, you yourself take your file and get lost."

The kids had gathered around us. The vice-principal cleared a path for himself through the kids and went into the office. However much I ran after him and begged and pleaded, it was no use. I stopped just outside the office door. I craned my neck and glanced into the office through the window. I saw the vice-principal putting my notebook on the principal's desk and showing him my composition. The principal read a bit and smiled.

 The kids had crowded around me and were showering taunts on me. Some of them did however, feel sorry for me. As I was looking through the window into the office, I saw my composition was being passed hand-to-hand among the teachers. The teachers were all grinning from ear to ear. One of them began to read it out loud and the others laughed. Mash Reza was serving them tea. They drank tea and laughed.

 

From Literature from the "Axis of Evil": Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea and Other Enemy Nations. A Words Without Borders Anthology. Published 2006 by the New Press. Copyright 2006 by Words Without Borders. All rights reserved. Please visit Words Without Borders at www.wordswithoutborders.org.