Sharp things.

Bare feet on the cold white marble floor, I open the front door of the house. There’s a strange man in the hallway. He’s got his back to me, only a few meters away. But now, surprised, he turns around, and with an intent look on his face, he’s coming for me. I should close the door, but my body can’t seem to move. I wish I hadn’t opened this door… Then, just before he reaches me, suddenly, the man turns around and runs in the opposite direction. What came over him I don’t understand, but, surely, this is my cue to slam the door shut: Bang! No one is getting through this entrance! The sound of the heavy metal front door hitting heavy metal frame ricochets throughout the stairwell outside.

With my face still inches away from the now closed door, I take a breath: in, and out. It’s like I’m just coming back to my body. And when I do, I feel the weight of the object I’m holding in my left hand. I look down and to the left, and there I see it’s blade. And I remember that I’m holding a rather large sickle in my left hand. A souvenir left behind from my then friend Essi, who had a thing for such sharp things: axes, machetes, sickles… And he was my partner in crime, up until I kicked him out of the house. My partner in getting high. See, together, we smoked glass in this house.

Now, people are trying to get in still. They are here for me. And, we are talking a large ground-floor family apartment, with more means of entry: the windows on the street side, and the balcony. And then, there are more windows at the back, towards the garden. These people… I don’t know who they are, but somehow, I knew from before that they were coming. And so I had “prepared”: I had changed all the locks, I had bolted window panels, and I had put metal bars behind certain windows -specifically, behind ones through which a grown man could fit. And despite all my preparations, and despite having felt “smarter than all of them” at the time, I am not feeling particularly safe at this point… In fact, I am scared -really scared! And I’m alone -so utterly, and hopelessly, alone.

This house was my island. On it, in my sister’s old childhood bedroom, is where I’ve been keeping my invaluable finds of Tehran. I’ve got them in a small wooden drawer: the green stuff, the brown stuff, the glassy crystal things, and the black gooey stuff… All tested to be of highest quality. All instruments of my peace-of-mind. The embodiment of my every-need-met. I was to take my stand here. Thus medicated, I had broken all barriers of self-doubt. I had managed to kick this chronically unfaithful woman out of the house. I had managed to expel this ungrateful fucking friend, and I had instituted boundaries. Boundaries reinforced with steel -literally! But, ironically, these boundaries are now to be violated all the same.

So the phone keeps ringing, and different characters come to the door. One minute, it’s the next-door neighbor, another, it’s my aunt, crying, pleading for me to open the door. And yet another, it is the police constable, whom I called to protect me from the strange man at the front door. Now, I can’t let the police in either! That, of course, being on the count of my wooden drawer -the one chock-full of illicit drugs!

Of the sheer amount of substances I have in the house, suffice to say that, with some unbelievably shaky hands, it takes me an eternity to flush all down the toilet (and still, apparently, I leave behind various bottles of liquor, which, in Iran, are banned just the same. Later on, my uncle, who had kindly orchestrated this violent abduction of the delusional junky, makes me sign a commitment letter promising not to ever have drugs in the house again. “The cops require it,” he says. I can tell he’s only trying to scare me, but mostly, this serves to humiliate me.)

Eventually, I decide that it’s time to get out of the house and face the music (obviously, after flushing all of my stuff down the toilet, there’s no point in staying anyway!) So when I do get out, I think it best to go out, straight onto the street -as in, through one of the windows. Simply, the thought of being alone with that strange man outside the door scares me to my core -a man who is not a cop, is not in uniform, has gotten into the building secretly, not introducing himself, not announcing his arrival… No! I want to get out into the daylight were there are people. And, by God, there is a crowd of people waiting for me out there! My exit must be quite the spectacle. In fact, I feel like tickets must’ve been sold for this, or that there might be a concession stand somewhere!

As soon as my feet touch the ground, someone twists my arm. He’s got technique; I cannot move. I’ve definitely given up, but for them, it doesn’t hurt to be sure. Then a car shows up to pick me up, and to my amazement, it is an ambulance! Am I sick or something? Then, as I’m being not-so-cordially invited into the dark and claustrophobic window-less back of the ambulance, I catch a glimpse from the corner of my right eye, of my uncle. A little ways down down the road, he is disembarking his crappy old Pride Hatchback, victoriously, seemingly, to join the post-hunt celebrations. Obviously, being the hunted animal that I am, I have no interaction with him. But I can tell, he looks sharp, with nice pants, shoes and jacket (in fact, he is so clean-shaven, that it feels like I could smell his cologne from distance -even though I most certainly cannot.)

When I get into the back of ambulance, I realize I need to be on friendlier terms with the giant who is getting in there with me. So I commend the big man on his grip whilst twisting my arm, and ask if this was “jiu-jitsu or something.” He’s puzzled by my remark and does not respond. Later, I find out that this was in fact some kind of a Kimura grip. This I will find out, because by that point in my life, I will know jiu-jitsu myself.