A Vision of Fire

Atash had received no visitors, no flowers, no bright quilt, no photographs, no other touches from home. He was an embarrassment.

One hour ago Atash had been given enough pain medication to prepare him for this twice-daily routine of circulation stimulation and rebandaging, leaving him in a waking dream state. His body was bolstered on all sides, propping him up and nearly immobilizing his upper body. The blanket was pulled up to his torso, covering his catheter tubes but leaving his legs exposed for the two nurses. The nurse working on his bandaged left leg was slowly manipulating his ankle joint so that he would have some chance of retaining full range of motion if he ever walked again. The nurse working on his right leg was removing his bandages. On his right foot and calf were fourth-degree burns. What scraps of skin remained were black. His heel had burned away to the bone and his calf muscles were raw shreds. Atash had burns on 90 percent of his body; it was a miracle he was alive.

“To suffer for the sins of his brother, that is why he lives,” a visiting cleric had murmured after inquiring who he was. The only compassion the young man received was from the two women who shouldn’t have been touching him.

• • •

Atash was barely aware of the miracle of his survival. In his waking dream he was running after his older brother, Rashid—no, somehow he was hovering above and behind him as Rashid was running a military-style parkour training through the city, sprinting hard, climbing walls, flipping over stairs, leaping fountains, all the while pursued by police.

“Don’t run, Rashid!” Atash called. “It will only make things worse!” But Atash already knew what the result of the trial would be. Homosexuality was the official “crime,” but drug trafficking and sedition would be added on to create the impression that homosexuals were all thoroughly debased.

Suddenly, the stocky figure of Rashid stopped running. He turned to Atash, who was now on the ground, facing him. He seemed different somehow. The air around them quickly filled with a kind of smoke, rolling in like a haboob in the desert. Only this wasn’t sand or smoke. Atash’s throat and eyes began to burn as if the air were misty with acid.

“Brother!” he cried, squinting into the haze.

Was that Rashid? It had to be. That’s who he had been chasing. Atash moved through the thickening clouds toward the indistinct shape.

“Rashid!”

The figure moved toward him in silhouette against the fog. Atash gagged on the choking sulfur, heard high winds rushing past his ears. He reached toward the figure even as the smoke swallowed it. “Come! It’s urgent now! We have to go!”

“Go where?” the other said in a voice that was like a sour song, melodious but off-key.

“Back,” Atash replied. “Back to the courtyard!”

His brother was yelling a reply, but while Atash heard the words, he had no idea what they signified. Something about boats… the sea…

“What are you saying?” Atash demanded. “I don’t understand!”

His brother was now entirely lost in the smoke but Atash could still hear his voice—a voice, shrill and frightened. “I am saying that you and the Believers, you’re insane!”

“And you’re blind!” Atash shouted back. But this time it was not his own voice he heard. It was higher, fairer.

“Blind? Your glogharasor are blind!”

His brother had shouted a curse—it meant “stupid sacrifices.” Atash did not know how he knew the meaning, but he did.

The figure suddenly appeared again through the smoke, only it was definitely not Rashid but somehow was still a brother. His skin was pale, his features unfamiliar. His layered attire was billowing in the strong wind, fastened to his chest with a strangely curving silver brooch. The figure picked up a bag like a seaman’s grip and grabbed Atash’s hand.

“Come!” the figure shouted. “Now!”

Atash grabbed the nearest heavy object, an ice pick that stood on end like a candlestick holder, and bashed it across his older brother’s head—but lightly, only enough to knock him out. Then he picked him up under the shoulders and dragged him backward through the streets. But—Atash looked around—this was not Tehran. It was the flaming hell of someplace else.

As he lumbered backward Atash could see that his brother was bleeding from the wound on his head. Somehow he knew where he was going. It was a short haul to a courtyard through the sooty vapors and stench, made easier by the empty pathways. Ash fell, clogging his nostrils and drying his throat. He paused to pull a scarf of some kind in front of his mouth. Atash heard screams and running on other streets but then he saw them, lit by the fire in the center of the courtyard, ringed by very tall, dark, rectangular columns. The Believers were forming the sacred circle, white and yellow robes turning and turning. Their arms were moving up and down and around. Atash pulled his brother over and made as if to join the circle, but a tall man stepped forward and put out a hand, stopping him.