Jessica Rowshandel

Akbar had two wishes. One, give him “a fucking cigarette.” And two, he wanted his children to promise that they’d smoke often, drink plenty, and eat all the food he hadn’t allowed himself. 

“Back then, I didn’t know better. I was scared to have another heart attack and maybe you’d grow up without a father.”

“So what about our children? Are we supposed to let them grow up without parents?” Marjan, his eldest, asked.

“Do whatever the hell you want,” he wheezed. “Do everything they say is bad for your health. You’ll be happier.” A rapid succession of irregular beeps bellowed from one of the machines monitoring him. Its cords and wires reached out from its chest, wrapped themselves around his ribs, invaded his nostrils, burrowed into his skin – a tangle of heavy fishing line and Akbar, the floundering fish at the end of it. 

“But none of us even smokes, Baba!” exclaimed Ali, his youngest, who spit fingernails and bullets onto the floor before airing his exasperation.

Marjan stomped her foot. “So I’m supposed to tell Parvin, sorry honey, mommy will do whatever she wants because her Baba doesn’t care if you grow up without a mommy.” 

“Nah. Nah. Tell her to do whatever the hell she wants, too.”  Marjan rolled her eyes and sighed into the sickly peach-colored vinyl chair where she sat twisted and folded into herself. An unlit cigarette undulated between the fingers of her limp hand, riding the hills and valleys. The cigarette meditated on whether it should light itself on fire for this dying man. Marjan was simply waiting for it to make a decision.

“It’s all a scam” he coughed, every other word bubbled in phlegm. “If everyone knew, we’d all kill ourselves to get there faster.”

Marjan barked and dropped her head into the palm of her other hand.

“Baba! Why are you telling us to kill ourselves! Are you Jim Jones?”

“Whatever you want to call me, Ali. I don’t care,” he frowned and turned his eyes away from his son, his voice thinner with each syllable, “I’m telling you the secret to life. Don’t be ungrateful. I know what I saw. I know what my creator said to me.”

He was officially dead for 237 seconds during his palliative surgery. And for 237 seconds that long beep blared, the one that tells you that the infomercial is over and the emergency broadcast system is in yet another rainbow panic. 

“Oh yea? And what did he say? ‘Akbar, tell your family to kill themselves!’”

“Nah, Marjan! He said,” Akbar took several shallow breaths. The burrow in his brow deepend and his dimpled chin quivered. He looked at god’s face in the ceiling, then at Marjan, “‘God said, I love you no matter what,” then at Ali, “You are welcome in paradise no matter what.’” Every word deliberate.

Marjan, with eyes on the verge of spilling over, “So how does that translate to suicide, Baba?”

“It’s all a scam, dokhtaram, ” He eked out. 

Ali slammed both of his hands on his thighs. His chair squeaked back a few centimeters from the jolt. “What, Baba? Is life a scam by Mohammad, and all the Imams, and the Buddha, and the Jesus – all of them conspiring with greeting card companies to sell more birthdays?!”

“Eh? Sell more birthdays?” Akbar erupted in a brief burst of hoarse laughter before he gasped for air. “Uh, uh a kind of, yes, Ali. Now you are getting it” he whispered.

Marjan snarled, “Baba, what the hell you are talking about?” 

Akbar’s chest crackled as he inhaled as much as he could; each of his cells hooked into and reeled in his soul so that his voice would sound like the old Baba’s again, clear and strong. “Please come give your Baba a kiss.” For that moment, he stepped through the door of their home, tossed his suitcases onto the floor, and opened his arms for his children who ran toward him. “I’m tired of these ugly walls. They look like the coffee when you forget to drink it all day.” He tried to chuckle.

Marjan and Ali stood up, each on either side of the bed. Akbar’s eyelids fell like dust. Ali took his Baba’s hand and squeezed it. Marjan ran the length of her finger against Akbar’s cheek. 

“I love you so much, Baba. I don’t want you to go to paradise without me,” tears ran from her before she could force them away.

“Baba, I will miss you.” Ali’s voice cracked and he sobbed into the back of his father’s hand.

The children each gave their Baba a kiss on the cheek and hesitated to pull away.

Marjan took a lighter from her pocket and put the long-suffering cigarette into her mouth. She lit it and placed it between her father’s lips. With his eyes still closed he sucked on it with a low growl: a smile grew on his face as he exhaled. His smoky, warm breath embraced his children as that long beep blared once again.

Marjan took the cigarette from his mouth, brought it to hers, and took a drag. Ali moved to her side and motioned toward her with his two fingers like a peace sign. The floor between them and Baba spread so far that their backs scraped and bled against the coarse, white moon behind them. The children passed the cigarette back and forth. Nurses crashed into the room: screeching voices and screaming, electric steel – the failure and fury while trying to save this rotted, gutted pumpkin of a man. Marjan and Ali blew storms of smoke toward their Baba’s bed. Until the room fell still again. Until the moon chased them from the sky.