Anahita Complex
by Meisam Khaghani
The resonance of tambourines’ thumping beats. The majestic blasts of resplendent flugelhorns. The affectionate yearning meows of particularly peculiar Persian cats, as snow-capped they were like Damfang Mount. All the forces of Persian nature echoed the entrance and arrival of her Imperial Grace, the Winter Nanny.
‘It’s not every day that our gracious Grace blesses us with her entrance!’ said the Water Queen of Persia, showing mild courtesy to the Winter Nanny. ‘D’you mind me calling you by your informal name, Nanny?’
‘What better than dropping that austere formality!’ said Nanny.
‘Well, welcome then Bianca, dear, to your home.’ The Water Queen and the Winter Nanny exchanged a smattering of giggles.
‘For your unrestraining record, my home isn’t down-to-earth, my dear Queen.’ said Bianca.
Nanny Bianca lived in a mysterious winter-swept hut, which she thanks to Ahura, the Persian God, much preferred to a castle. The populace of Persia, children in particular, liked to think of Nanny Bianca as living in a proud crystal castle. To her, her hut was as comfortable in stability as any earthly hotel could afford, although it cannot be completely guaranteed that Nanny Bianca’s domicile was also safe from natural phenomena; considering that it continually was displaced and afloat all the while in the Metal Vault.
‘I still feel myself to be the toddler you saved from drowning in water.’ The Queen said.
‘Same old story as always.’ muttered Nanny Bianca, sarcastically. ‘You kept telling me to let you ride on a dolphin—’
‘‘Dolphinus Daiseus,’ you said and poured the daisy seeds into the Persian Gulf.’ said the Queen.
‘If I hadn’t saved you on that day, Anahita– forgive me for calling you by your little name… If I hadn’t been so brisk, then you would have swallowed a huge intake of salt water and died.’
Anahita embraced Nanny Bianca in welcome. Just as the children and kittens had thought, now it’s about time we were invited to a sumptuous feast, they were suspended in mid-action: Nanny Bianca had declared to them how awful it was of her that she couldn’t prolong her stay. Many folkloric Persian tales tease Nanny Bianca as being a lethargic, lugubrious critter. They’re quite right in their judgement about the lugubrious part, but they surely discredit her with the disinterested, unenthusiastic conception. The transitory beings think, since because Nanny Bianca is immortal, she has got time aplenty to rest and while away the hours to her heart’s content. While the truth is, her commitment to nature is her priority. Thereby, people have got to respect her, otherwise there’d be no long nights in winter, in wait for the rebirth of nature, the start of which is marked by Nowruz.
*****
‘You servile, subordinate, subservient servant of mine, I’d demanded my hookah hours ago!’ growled a voice seventy layers below the normal ground. No dapple of light was in the spectrum in the vicinity to clarify the smog of eleven drained hookahs in the air. Only the outlines of Ahriman, the Destructive Spirit, and his minions were discernible. The atmosphere was so dense that you’d think you were living in the air-populated cities of centuries forward. The dark, cold, unpolished, cheap metal bedstead on which Ahriman lay with infant spiders and scorpions couched on his dishevelled head groaned, as if Nanny Bianca’s furry friends were being slaughtered. As he smoked the hookah that would send even Zeus to the Underworld, (of course, if he had a knack of such habit), Ahriman nibbled on the tip of his pipe, as though he was a wild, scatter-brained squirrel gnawing at his sustenance.
‘You brat, clean!’ snarled he at the shrouded infant-faced child scrubbing the ever dirty floor of the cave. ‘You squawky, squishy, squeal… lower the whip to speed our damsel-daughter’s cleaning!’ The imperceptible dwarfish figure reluctantly lowered the whip and reluctantly gave a weak, faint strike to the helpless so-called damsel-daughter. This drew the last stroke in his lord’s case. Ahriman blunderingly but powerfully and in an unmanly ungainly way, as was his usual case, razed the bedstead to the ground and whisked out the whip out of the sqqqqueaaal’s clutch!
A cry of help resounded in the private chamber, in which one would find the calmest natural sound—the trilling beaming chirping flourishes of streamfalls. On all the four sides of the private chamber, there were six water pitches surmounting the calligraphically decorated stretches installed on the walls and streams of pure, pristine water cascaded down the rim of them. Those cascading streams gave existential meaning to serene bassoon-like sounds like the wintry breeze that would wander inside sidling through the ajar windows, which were like the crafts of embroidery—the wintry breeze that would roam into the cozy, comfy, warmth-coated closet of the Water Queen and comb the ivies that festooned the Persian mirrored columns.
‘Madam, you called?’ entered a waiting-gentlewoman.
‘Call Bianca immediately! Tell her that I wish to consolidate my throne. And—’ Anahita picked up a sealed letter from her bedside and with a water-shooting flourish, as if it was a board surfing on a wrestling tide, flew the envelope to the maid.
‘By Ahura,’ panted Anahita, as though she had run the equator to and fro. ‘He is intent on owning her.’
*****
The waiting-gentlewoman knocked on the teal-shaded, cedar-wooden door. Nanny Bianca was admitted to the presence of Anahita. Nanny Bianca was already inside. The phenomenon of the daybreak hadn’t happened yet. But Anahita’s face was transfixed in sweats that in rivulets slithered down her Persian visage, making slight hissing sinister sounds that engulfed her mind and vision. Nanny Bianca knew how to put things right, so she froze the time and the more time became stiff and concentrated, the more the perspiring rivers on Anahita’s countenance infused her with the will to exit this delusional trance. This delusional trance housed a tick-tock sound akin to the parade-like walks of a Greek chorus. The resonance of the clockwork escalated in Anahita’s crying ears, when all of a sudden she awoke from her nightmarish trance and noticed Nanny Bianca standing in the middle of the closet room. Nanny Biance’s spell had been dispelled by now that what she craved was achieved. Nanny Bianca showed sympathy towards Anahita’s inability to be communicative in the moment. She instead of compelling Anahita to blurt out anything, made the move herself and shifted her standing— from stillness to sitting by the fear-stricken soul in the room. To kick off a playful start, she traced Anahita’s soaked features and as she did, Anahita felt a shivering coldness lick the debris of her perspiration. The touch of warmth and coldness contributed to Anahita’s ecstatic feelings. A while after, now that the situation was retrieved back to a normal state, Nanny Bianca invitingly encouraged Anahita to rise from her four-posted bed to follow her lead. As happens in the tale of Cinderella, Nanny Bianca swished and gave a flicker to her forefinger, out of which a sliver thought outpoured and swathed Anahita’s tender barefeet in itself. A Pair of icy shoes formed at around the edges of Anahita’s feet and with that done, Nanny Bianca addressed her to come along. The pair walked out of the window in such a manner that one would say they were seriously and sincerely walking on the bare ground. Up to a point, Nanny Bianca strode and called this bit of stretch, up to here, some warm-up. Then she waited till Anahita could join her. Once the pair were united again, the breeze around them swarmed and swirled and got speed and if they lived in our era, one might say the plane is getting ready to take a flight!
Out of fright, a yelling escaped Anahita’s mouth but fortunately her hand was secured in Nanny Bianca’s arm.
‘Persia is thy land,
Persaigle is thy bird,
Cyrus is thy king,
And Anahita is thy mother, Persia!’
While Nanny Bianca serenaded as such, Anahita screeched. In the meanwhile, it would be good to wonder how Nanny Bianca’s ears didn’t go deaf. While they were flying on the wind in the Metal Vault, strewn with dapples of bright overall, Nanny Bianca showed Anahita—indicated to her that she hasn’t been tarrying: The mountains snow-capped, the rivers frozen, the forests devoid of prowls and lurks, humans confined to their barricades, and whatnot!
‘Once upon a time, there lived a maiden prophesied to go blind. But she was intent on capturing the culture of a thousands-year-old civilization—no, not for a bunch of mediocres to claim pride in it but for them to find wealth in poverty—joy in the unfeel—bliss in the cold and whatnot!’ sermonized Nanny Bianca.
‘Why are you telling me this fairytale, while my heart is in rags for the mighty mongol who shall claim this country as his own. I shall never be fit to rule, as the world is dominated by men who are- fortuitous for nought- discriminatory to their humanity, reducing themselves to aggressive phallics!’ said Anahita in a blistering tone.
‘Clearly, you’ve never read the Fantastical Letters of Faerie Lee: Her Hymns and Stories. Faerie Lee was that woman who single-handedly rolled up her sleeves, tucked a Persaiglian feather in her hair, and sat to gather the patches of a distorted, dispatched, and diverse nation.’ said Nanny Bianca.
Anahita did not stray from her path of keeping silence.
‘But I need to know if, for Ahura’s sake, you have ever heard or ever at least read from Abdul Qasem Ferdowsi, thanks to whom Persia is endowed with a documentary book that catalogues the cycles of this land’s history.’
Anahita burst into sobbing with a reminiscing sense of devastation.
‘Accept my apologies, my dear sweet angel. I wished no ill will to upset you. It is not your fault—’
‘He beat me every time I dared to be spoken. He crushed me every time I dared to raise my head. He saw himself as the epitome of supreme masculinity and my femininity to him wasn’t worth an Ahura’s ring…’ Anahita sobbed, wept, and cried, as she couldn’t believe in the diabolical nature of this Ahuraian given literature!
Forthwith, Nanny Bianca opened her arms wide like the supreme wings of Persaigle. ‘Let me be thy mother for a minute to vanquish the evil spirit of Ahrimanian despair that has fanged black blood into the pores of your skin.’ Nanny Bianca accepted Anahita into her bosom, planted several kisses on her face that clearly bore heart-curdling effects of beatings of yore, and like a mother kitten licked her infant’s sweet desalinated trickles and showered upon her her own frost and soothed her hot wrathful, devastated temper.
‘My sweet child, your knowledge of how blessed you are is so frugal. You are a force of light and good. Nothing material defines you. Because you know, a soldier of Ahura is to be remembered for good. And you know that! Ahriman, heh?’ Nanny Bianca scoffed. ‘He is evil. So, he shall and should be forgotten. But most prominently, he is not evil because— because you know that he is both literally and simply defined as the Destructive Spirit— but you know what truly makes someone deserved to be called evil: Ignorance, in most cases at least.’ Nanny Bianca saying that Anahita experienced an aha moment, as though she was mentored.