Mickey Mouse Jihad

by Mohammad Hakima

It was only after his son’s death that Gholam Ali, the most famous rug merchant in the holy city of Mashhad, stopped believing in God.

For as long as anyone could remember, Gholam Ali’s had been considered one of the most renowned rug shops in Iran. Everybody around Mashhad knew Gholam Ali or had heard stories about him. He was a tall, stoopshouldered man with bushy eyebrows and tousled hair that radiated from his head in fluffy spokes. He’d originally opened up his shop in his early twenties, after marrying his first cousin, Manijeh, a 19-year-old carpetmaker, and it was through her that he’d learned the ins and outs of how to run an effective business. Manijeh had helped him foster connections with the newest carpetmakers around Iran, usually middle-aged women in Yazd or Isfahan who’d spend months sitting in front of looms, weaving the most exquisite rugs in the world, and after the first few years, Gholam Ali had become adept at haggling and trading and showing up to the right place at the right time. His store boasted the most sought-after rugs with the most unique motifs: the intricately intertwined vines and floral designs of Isfahan, the lavish gardens of weeping willows and cypresses in Tabriz, and the dazzlingly interconnected hexagons and medallions of Shiraz.

 When their first son, Ehsan, was born, Manijeh quit her job as a carpetmaker and began working full time at the shop. Just about every minute of Ehsan’s early childhood was spent around the store. When he was two years old, Manijeh bought him a wooden rug-beater that was shaped like a paddle, with foam padding taped to the handle for a soft grip and a Mickey Mouse sticker on the rectangular head.

“Mickey loves dust,” she’d tell him, whenever she’d pick him up and settle him on her hip. “Do you know what he does when he sees a big carpet? He jumps on it and goes nom-nom-nom-nom-nom!” she’d attack him and nibble his cheek and he’d burst into giggles. “He eats all the dust. All these little furry things that you see on the carpet—Mickey loves them! He thinks they’re delicious.”

She’d show him how to grip the paddle and smack it against carpets hung up on racks outside of the shop, and by the time Ehsan was seven, he was in charge of all carpet-dusting duties. Gholam Ali helped him set up a fort in the corner of the store, a bed sheet neatly draped over two towering stacks of rugs, and after Ehsan had finished his chores, he’d crawl into his fort and play with his toys or color in his coloring book.

During his teenage years, Ehsan began taking on more responsibilities around the shop, cleaning the counters, working the cash register, and consulting with customers. After the Islamic revolution in 1979, when Mashhad became the world’s leading site for pilgrimage tourism, Ehsan told his father that they should shift their business model and start specializing in prayer rugs and religious memorabilia. At the start of the 80’s, during the first years of the Iran-Iraq war, their store sold the finest prayer beads (“the beads glitter when you say Bismillah,” Gholam Ali used to tell customers) and the most delicately designed mohrs. Pretty soon, they began attracting attention from religious clerics all across the Middle East. Shiite clerics from Kabul, Baghdad, and Tehran flocked to the shop, and Gholam Ali and his wife were dubbed The Blessed Merchants of Mashhad.

“You guys are the reason people say Mashallah in Mashhad,” Abdul Wahhad Al-Hashem told them. He was a revered Shiite cleric, one of the leaders of the Sadrist Movement in Iraq, and a close friend of the Supreme Leader’s. Gholam Ali and his wife used to have dinner with him whenever he visited their shop.

“It’s incredible what’s happening now,” Abdul Wahhad told them once during dinner. “Now that we’ve finally managed to take back Khorramshahr from Iraq, everybody in Iran wants to end the war. It’s ridiculous!”

“How do you figure?” Gholam Ali asked.

“Well, Saddam’s a lunatic. He has no business running an entire country.”

“He’s an absolute barbarian,” Manijeh added.

“Oh he’s much worse than that,” Abdul Wahhad said. “He’s fundamentally detrimental to the future of Islam. That’s why we need to fight for our beliefs. If we stop the war now, Saddam will slaughter all the Shiites. Everything we fought for in the ‘79 revolution will go up in smoke.”

“But you think we should invade Iraq?” Gholam Ali asked. “What’s the point of that? Why pick a fight with the Sunnis when we already have everything we want?”

“Because Shiism is God’s will,” Abdul Wahhad said. “Don’t forget that. And this business of yours: do you know how much more it could be worth if you opened up a second location in Baghdad? You’d be creating a Shiite haven! And you have the perfect person for that second location,” he winked at fourteen-year-old Ehsan.

“I could run a whole shop by myself?” Ehsan beamed.

“You could be a hero,” Abdul Wahhad grabbed the boy’s wrist. “You could fight for this country and open up your own store in a city that you and your brothers have wrested from the hands of Saddam and the West.”

“Oh please,” Gholam Ali interjected. “This boy’s not going to war.”

“And why not?” Abdul Wahhad leaned forward with authority. “Why’re you so against fighting the good fight? Are you not the blessed merchant everyone says you are?”

He muttered something in Arabic, a familiar phrase that sounded bitter and accusatory, and for a second Gholam Ali thought that he was reciting a verse from Al-Munafiqun, the surah in the Quran about hypocrites and wishy-washy believers who profess their faith but are unwilling to fight for Islamic justice.

That night, after Ehsan had already gone to bed, Manijeh sat next to Gholam Ali in the kitchen and told him that he should’ve been more discreet about his beliefs around Abdul Wahhad. “You were so disagreeable! You gotta watch your words around these people.”

“What did you expect me to say?” Gholam Ali threw up his hands. “I wasn’t gonna sit there and say, Yes, Mr. Cleric! Please give my son a gun and encourage him to go to war.”

“That’s not the point,” Manijeh replied.

“I don’t care what the point is! My son isn’t ready to go to the frontlines and kill people. The only violence he’s ever committed is slapping a rug with a Mickey Mouse paddle.”

“But what if these clerics start questioning us? What if they start thinking we’re hypocrites or non-believers?”

“Abdul Wahhad wouldn’t think that.”

“How do you know? He’s friends with the Supreme Leader, for God’s sake! You know what happens to secular people in this country,” she slid her index finger across her throat.

“But we’re not secular.”

“Then what are we?” Manijeh raised her voice. “What do you think the regime is gonna think of us after you railed against the war that they call holy?”

“I didn’t rail against it. I just said it was pointless.”

“Exactly! That’s because you’re thinking about it from a practical standpoint, not a spiritual one. You’re not even on the same wavelength as these people.”

“So what do you suggest we do then?” Gholam Ali grew flustered.

“We gotta figure out some kind of compromise with them,” Manijeh said. “Or else they’ll keep coming back and asking about Ehsan. They’ll do anything to recruit him for jihad.”

That last word sent a shudder through Gholam Ali. It was one of those increasingly popular terms that he kept hearing over and over in the news, and he wasn’t quite sure what it meant. He had a hard time believing that his friendship with Abdul Wahhad could be tainted by it, but Manijeh’s stern expression made him think twice about his relationships with powerful clerics. Why had they been hanging out with him? Was Abdul Wahhad really one of those authority figures that had been sent by the regime to encourage kids as young as thirteen or fourteen to join the war?

Later that night, as Gholam Ali was going to bed, he noticed that Ehsan’s bedroom door was left ajar. He poked his head into the room and gazed at the sleeping form of his son, curled up beneath the covers. The boy had grown quite a bit over the years, his slender limbs long and ungainly, but in the pale moonlight streaming through the half-open blinds of the window, he appeared gentle and frail, like that same baby that had needed nursing all those years ago. He was lying on his side, facing the doorway with his knees drawn up to his chest, and Gholam Ali wondered whether he’d overheard his discussion with Manijeh in the kitchen. He wished that he could close the door and know that his son was resting in peace, but he couldn’t think of himself as a nurturing father. He hadn’t been able to shield Ehsan from the manipulative rhetoric of the Islamic Republic. The boy had been thrilled by Abdul Wahhad’s assertion that he could be a hero. His bedroom wall was covered with posters of Western movie stars that he’d collected during the time of the Shah: Clint Eastwood brandishing a pistol with a snarl, Rocky Balboa pumping his fists after a workout. Western culture had been celebrated before the revolution, but now that everything had changed, Gholam Ali was afraid that his son’s idea of heroism was charged with a secular allure that was no longer permitted in their society.

. . .

A few months later, on his fifteenth birthday, Ehsan ran into the shop after school, smiling and waving a piece of paper. “I did it!”

“What did you do?” Gholam Ali snatched the paper out of his hand.

“I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I finally decided to do it. I wanna expand our family business and open up my own shop. I think I’m ready for it.”

“What’re you talking about?” Gholam Ali put on his reading glasses and inspected the sheet. He couldn’t make sense of all the formal print and the miniature boxes with signatures and initials.

“I’m going to business school at the University of Shiraz!” Ehsan exclaimed. “They told me I don’t even have to finish high school before I enroll.”

“Who told you this?”

Before Ehsan could answer, Gholam Ali saw the emblem of the Artesh at the top of the page: a soldier’s helmet with two crisscrossing swords, situated in front of the word Allah written in artful letters. Below it was the phrase The Islamic Republic of Iran Army Ground Forces.

Gholam Ali’s face blanched. “You joined the army?”

“Only for two years.”

“What!”

“Read the last paragraph, dad.”

Gholam Ali scanned the fine print at the bottom of the form. The miniscule words jumbled together like a colony of ants said something about tuition-free college enrollment after mandatory completion of service.

“They’re paying for everything,” Ehsan said. “And they told me I can start next week!”

Gholam Ali’s head was spinning. He couldn’t handle all of this new information. Anxiety was ticking inside him like a time bomb. “Why did you decide to do this all of a sudden?”

“Because it’s a good idea. I’m going to jebhe, the front lines. I’m gonna learn about responsibility, accountability, and time-management, all those things that you and mom used to say were so important for running a business.”

“But you’re not gonna be running a business. You’re gonna be shooting a gun!”

“Only for a little while! And then they’re gonna send me to school, so I can learn about budgeting and finance.”

“You think the army is gonna do all that for you?”

“Absolutely!”

“Have you told your mother about this?”

“I’m gonna go tell her now.”

Manijeh was standing in the corner of the store, chatting with a customer about the new hand-knitted prayer rug that they’d acquired last week from Hamedan. She was extolling the virtues of the rug by patting it with the palm of her hand.

“You feel how soft this is? It’s the kinda rug that’ll make you wanna pray an extra raka’at at the mosque,” she delivered her go-to line with a jaunty grin.

As the customer leaned over to examine the rug, Ehsan strolled towards her and handed her the form. She glanced at it for a few seconds and her eyebrows shot up in pleasant surprise. She embraced him with a smile, kissed his forehead, and whispered something in his ear, and Ehsan glanced at his father, as if to assure him that he’d made the right decision.

Gholam Ali didn’t know what to say. A million thoughts were revolving through his mind. He couldn’t fathom how a bunch of dimwitted soldiers could teach his son anything useful about business management. His face grew hot, and he leaned on the counter and rubbed his eyes, trying to steady his frantic mind. He couldn’t understand why Manijeh was so happy. Her reaction validated Ehsan’s delusions about the army, and made him seem like a stodgy and ill-tempered father who was always critical of his son’s decisions. She alienated him from Ehsan, so much so that he was almost inclined to believe that something insidious was afoot, some secret agreement between mother and son that had taken place behind his back. Why else would Ehsan join the army without telling him? Manijeh wanted to compromise with the clerics, so perhaps a brief two-year stint in the army was her idea of a worthwhile deal.

Later that evening, when Ehsan was outside helping a customer, Gholam Ali pulled his wife into the storage room at the back of the store.

“You’re all smiles today, aren’t you?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Oh c’mon! You know exactly what I mean.”

Manijeh frowned. “No I don’t.”

“What do you think we’re here to talk about?”

“Hmmm,” Manijeh tapped a finger on her lips. “Let me read your mind real quick and try to find out.”

“Our son made a big decision today, didn’t he?” Gholam Ali snorted.

“Oh so that’s what this is about,” Manijeh smirked. “You couldn’t just come out and say it?”

“Well, I didn’t wanna burst your bubble. You seem so thrilled by it.”

“Oh do I?” Manijeh sharpened her voice. “Just because I’m not walking around looking miserable in front of customers, that means I’m thrilled?”

“I don’t know what it means. All I know is that I’m worried about Ehsan.”

“I am too!”

“Then why were you smiling when he showed you the form? Why did you get all cute and whisper in his ear?”

Manijeh was livid. “You gotta be kidding me right now! I whispered to him because I was with a customer. I told him let’s talk about this when I’m done.”

“And did you talk about it?”

“No! I didn’t have a chance. I’ve been working all day, putting on a face for customers, while you’ve been leaning on the counter sulking.”

“So tell me something then,” Gholam Ali tried to contain his mounting anger. “Why did he decide to do this all of a sudden without telling me?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me anything either.”

Gholam Ali raised a suspicious brow. “Are you sure about that? You had no idea this was happening?”

“Oh my god,” Manijeh covered her face with her hands and started pacing around the room. “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m just as confused as you are, and to be honest with you, I don’t have time to deal your paranoia. If you wanna believe that I was behind Ehsan’s plans, then you’re welcome to go ahead and do so. I don’t care!”

She shook her head and flounced out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Gholam Ali took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He wanted to believe her, but he was too frazzled to hone in on what the truth might be. A part of him felt ashamed of the accusation that he’d levelled at her, but then another part of him was plagued by a paranoia that was rooted in self-pity. If Manijeh had actually arranged something behind his back, it was only because he’d failed to impose his guardianship with enough authority to manage Ehsan’s future. He loathed himself for not being the father and husband that he knew he should be.

He strode out of the room after her. It wasn’t too late to take control of the situation. What’s done is done, he wanted to tell her; there was nothing they could do about it now, so their only option was to come together and support Ehsan as best as they could.

. . .

After Ehsan left for the army, it was a couple of months before Manijeh and Gholam Ali started receiving letters from him, one or two every few weeks. Gholam Ali developed an unusual attachment to the post office; he’d go there every day in the morning and in the afternoon, and whenever there was a letter waiting for him, he’d jog back cheerfully and shut down the store for an hour or so, just so he and Manijeh could sit behind the counter and take turns reading the letter aloud. In the first few letters, Ehsan expressed nothing but excitement about what he was doing on the frontlines. He was stationed in a small town near Amarah in the south of Iraq, and every once in a while, when the troops would drive across the border to Ahvaz to restock their supplies, he’d scribble a letter to his parents and hand it to the secretary, a man named Babak who was in charge of maintaining all communications between soldiers and the outside world.

“Mail doesn’t get delivered here unfortunately,” Ehsan wrote. “There are too many convoys coming and going, so they decided to ramp up inspections and stop all shipments that weren’t strictly necessary. But the cool thing is that Babak is super nice. We have tea with him in the afternoons, and he picks dates for us from the trees.”

Ahvaz was known for its magnificent palm trees, and Gholam Ali was glad that his son was enjoying their delectable dates. The letters kept coming for over a year, long enough for Gholam Ali to feel assured that his son was perfectly safe. He got so used to hearing positive news that sometimes, he’d even tell customers around the store how proud he was of Ehsan.

“The boy is making the best of a tough situation. He’s a warrior!”

People would always shake Gholam Ali’s hand and thank his son for his service. They’d tell him how blessed his family was in the eyes of God, and soon enough, Gholam Ali started to believe that Ehsan was performing a righteous service. The boy was a soldier of the Islamic Republic, fighting in the name of Allah, and Allah would never misguide him. There was definitely something glorious about his pious life, and Gholam Ali almost regretted his fiercely secular stance in front of Abdul Wahhad.

“God is looking out for us,” he told Manijeh once. “Next year, when our boy leaves the military, he’s gonna go to business school and be recognized as a hero, as a savior of his country.”

That statement seemed to become truer and truer as the days went by. But then one evening, when Gholam Ali returned to the store after running errands, he saw Manijeh sitting behind the counter, next to an official looking envelope that must’ve been directly delivered to their shop. She was holding a piece of paper that was red, white, and green, the colors of the Iranian flag, and her hands were trembling. She didn’t respond when he asked her what was up.

“What is that?” he motioned to the paper. She shot him a disconcerted glance, and he sensed a prick in her eyes, a welling-up of tears. She opened her mouth to say something, but her breath came out in rapid gusts, as if she was trying to expel something dreadful from her lungs. She clutched her chest to stop herself from panicking, but it was too late. Her chest was heaving violently and she tossed her head back with a look of terror and shrieked at the top of her lungs. He leaned over and squeezed her hand to calm her down, but when he scanned the page, his stomach dropped. He read the words “We deeply regret to inform you” at the top of the page, and in the next paragraph “an airstrike on the military base in Ahvaz”, and by the time he saw “a funeral service will be held in Tehran for all shahids,” the paper slipped through her fingers and fell on the floor.

. . .

The next few weeks leading up to Ehsan’s funeral were the worst days of Gholam Ali’s life. Manijeh fell ill from distress and grief, some kind of terrible fever that drained her face of color and enervated her so much that she had to be confined to her bed. Gholam Ali was forced to shut down the store and take care of her day and night. He’d sit next to her and keep a cool washcloth on her forehead and lift up her neck so she could drink tea with lemon and cardamom, as the local doctor had prescribed. Sometimes she’d spit out the tea and start spewing hazyoons, incoherent ramblings about how God had forsaken her and how shaitan was luring her to hell to punish her for her sins.

“Save me from the fire!” she’d shriek, thrashing around on the bed. Gholam Ali would lay down next to her and embrace her, promising her that everything would be okay, but then his own grief and pain would constrict his chest and he’d burst into sobs.

People around Mashhad started coming to his house to send their condolences. Every day, there’d be a pile of letters and bouquets of flowers on his doorstep. After a couple of weeks, however, his doorbell began ringing for all the wrong reasons. He’d open the door expecting another gift from another neighbor, but he’d see two or three clerics standing there, fiddling awkwardly with their robes. 

“Our deepest condolences, Haj Agha,” they’d say, employing the formal address, “but everyone in town is wondering when you’ll open up your store. Tourist season for pilgrims is coming around, and everyone wants to buy a new prayer rug.”

Gholam Ali hated it when clerics showed up to his house. He’d treat them politely and tell them that he was still grieving, but he’d always mutter curses at them after he’d shut the door.

Finally, when the day of the funeral came, he hired a nurse to come watch Manijeh, since she wasn’t feeling well enough to leave the house. He put on his all-black outfit, as instructed by the letter, a sleek button-up with dress pants and dress shoes, and took the train to Tehran. At the train station in Tehran, he expected some kind of shuttle service to be provided for him. The letter had said that the funeral would be held in Shaheen Square, “with transportation made available for out-of-town family members of the shahids,” but when he looked around the station, he couldn’t find a shuttle, so he called a taxi.

“It’s gonna be a while,” the taxi driver said. “Everyone is going to Shaheen Square today. Traffic is backed up on Laleh Boulevard.”

The taxi’s air-conditioner was broken. Gholam Ali sat braising in the backseat beneath the afternoon sun for two hours until they reached the square. When he stepped out of the car, his mouth was parched and his shirt drenched with sweat. He started arguing with the driver about how much to pay and ended up throwing more bills than he wanted to on the passenger’s seat, because the driver hurried him away. A black Mercedes Benz behind them was honking its horn. 

“Get a move on, brother!” the driver of the Mercedes shouted. “We got the Imam’s family in the car.”

Hordes of people were chasing the Mercedes, chanting blessings from the Quran and pressing their cameras against its windows to take pictures of whoever was inside. Gholam Ali didn’t know who the Imam was or why his family deserved such special recognition.

He made his way through the crowd towards the stage at the center of the square, where the main ceremony was taking place. There were people of all ages, the men in darker colored button-ups and the women covered from head to toe in heavy black chadors. He squeezed past columns of people parading redoubtable black banners with La-illaha-illalah written on them. Everyone was mourning with a fretfulness that made him uncomfortable. A woman was wailing and wiping her tears. Her veil was pushed back on her head, exposing strands of her hair.

“Where’s your hijab, woman?” a young man in a plain black uniform shouted. “Have some dignity, for God’s sake!”

The man was a Basij member hired to protect the imam. He glared menacingly when Gholam Ali strode past him with a gentle nudge and an excuse me.

At the center of the stage, the imam with a tightly-wound turban was standing in front of a microphone, delivering an impassioned sermon. He was surrounded by coffins draped in Iranian flags, like treasure chests filled with the spoils of war.

“They slayed him with their swords, those wretched unbelievers!” the imam proclaimed. “They spilled his blood on the sands of Karbala. And do you know what Imam Hussein (Peace Be Upon Him) did when he fell on the ground? He grasped a fistful of dirt, kissed it, and breathed his last words. What were those famous last words?” he lifted his arms, compelling the crowd to recite.

“La-illaha-illalah!” people roared in unison. Gholam Ali covered his ears; it was the harshest chant he’d ever heard. When he finally reached the stage, he couldn’t believe that he recognized the imam.

“Abdul Wahhad!” he yelled. “It’s me!”

Abdul Wahhad perked up in surprise. For a second, Gholam Ali thought that he was about to wave to him and invite him on stage, but he quickly averted his gaze, as though he’d seen a ghost, and continued his speech.

“My son is in one of those coffins,” Gholam Ali croaked. “Why don’t you say something about him?”

His voice was drowned out by the din of the crowd, so he shouted again, but Abdul Wahhad didn’t acknowledge him. There was a twitch in the corner of Abdul Wahhad’s eye, a little sign of resistance, as if he was trying as hard as he could to ignore him.

“I know you hear me!” Gholam Ali blared. “Say something about my boy. He was only eighteen.”

Abdul Wahhad raised his palm, as if telling Gholam Ali to shut up, then squared up and spoke in a booming voice. People closest to the stage were sobbing, flaunting their misery, and Abdul Wahhad leaned over and shook their hands, lavishing attention upon them.

 “Are you kidding me?” Gholam Ali yelled. “You’re just gonna stand there and ignore me?”

“Calm down, man,” the guy next to him said. “You’re shouting at an imam.”

“I don’t give a damn!” Gholam Ali fumed. “That man isn’t an Imam. He’s Abdul Wahhad, the son of a bitch that used to drink tea on my couch!”

He jumped and smacked the stage floor with both hands, trying to get Abdul Wahhad’s attention, but from the corner of his eye, he saw two middleaged men with uniforms striding towards him. He was causing a ruckus, and the Basij could arrest him and throw him in jail. He turned and shoved people aside with his shoulder (“get out of my way!”) and hurried as fast as he could. He scurried behind a row of chadored women marching with banners and ducked, trying to lose sight of the Basij. He lunged around people’s legs, dodged their outstretched arms as they chanted and gesticulated wildly, and wrestled his way to a nearby intersection. Behind him, people were stepping aside to let the Basij through. He quickened his pace, turned a corner, and sprinted up the sidewalk. The Basij were chasing him, shouting at people to hold him back, so he darted in and out of several alleyways and kept running with all his might until there was no one behind him. He came to a stop beneath the shadow of a chenar tree and bent over gasping with his hands on his knees. He could still hear faint sounds from the square, but he was too far away for the Basij to find him. He was in a narrow alley filled with shabby apartments and stray cats roaming in and out of dilapidated shops. It looked like his street back home in Mashhad; his rug shop was probably somewhere around the corner. A cat meowed and scurried into a convenience store, and he followed it inside to grab a bottle of water.

The woman behind the counter greeted him with a hearty Assalamualaikum. For a moment, he thought that she was Manijeh. She didn’t resemble his wife, but her soft voice and professional demeanor reminded him of Manijeh’s interactions with customers. He half-expected to see Ehsan popping up around the corner as he walked down the aisle towards the cooler full of drinks. The shelves on the left side of the aisle were filled with dolls and cheap stuffed animals, and he stopped in front of a gleefully smiling Mickey Mouse toy. It was one of those windup toys that he used to play with as a kid, and he wound it up and placed it atop the smooth surface of the shelf. It tottered unsteadily, vibrating with every step, the clunkiest gait he’d ever seen. It kept going towards the edge of the shelf, racing towards the precipice without fear, and he had to catch it before it fell off. It grinned at him from his palm, as if it knew all along that he would save it. It trusted him as a guardian, in the same way that he’d trusted that guardian in the sky to protect his son. And yet where was He when Ehsan needed Him?

That was the one question that hounded Gholam Ali. He knew the truth and he was ashamed to admit it. His son was floating in the vast blankness of oblivion, and there was no God waiting to salute him on Judgement Day, no houris welcoming martyrs to heavenly gardens. All of that gibberish had been imbedded in his mind by the regime, and he couldn’t believe that all this time he’d been stupid enough to believe it. His heart was pounding with fury. He wanted to curse every cleric in this country and hang them up by their turbans, especially that traitor, Abdul Wahhad.

He clenched his fists as tightly as he could, but no matter how hard he squeezed, he couldn’t crush the toy in his hand. Mickey was as solid as a rock. It was still smiling and its resilience conjured an enduring memory that he hadn’t thought about in years: Ehsan clutching a rug-beater with his puny fingers, Manijeh kissing him on the cheek. That memory was a part of his life, his and his alone, and he could revive it whenever he wanted to give himself another boost, another jolt of joy. He could escape the wanton pain, cruelty, and suffering of this world and travel to that sublime realm where this memory belonged. An ecstatic gust of pathos swept him up and carried him to the heart of that realm, and all of a sudden he was standing next to his family, basking in the warmth of their presence. Everything around him glowed with the fullness of his existence, with the triumph of him being here, in this exalted moment. He wanted this moment to last an eternity, but the elation reached its peak and subsided as quickly as it came, and he found himself back in this drab convenience store, his mouth dry, his head throbbing with thirst. He exhaled and made up his mind to do the only thing that he could do: walk towards the water bottles in the cooler with Mickey in hand.

Mohammad Hakima is an NYC-based author. He moved to the United States in August 1998 from Tehran, Iran. His work is published or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Black Warrior Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Popula, JMWW and etc. His stories have been twice a finalist and once shortlisted for the William Wisdom Faulkner prize. His work has received support from Vermont Studio Center, and he has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and The Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. He works as a high school special education teacher and has an MFA in fiction from The New School.