persepolis

In the style of a news broadcast.
Seven people have been injured and three killed after an Iraqi missile fell on Tavanir, Tehran. The explosion occurred at 7:15 pm and destroyed a civilian building at the end of the street, as well as causing extensive damage to the surrounding apartments. This is the latest in a series of attacks by the Iraqi government, and one of the first to employ long-range ballistic missiles. Neighbours of the deceased have declined to comment.

In nouns.
Jeans. Earrings. Ring. Sound. Radio. Crackle. Tavanir. Strike.
Panic. Denial. Taxi. Speed. Fear. Nausea. Sirens. Crowd. Push. Shout.
Rifle. Persuasion. Push. Entrance.
Rubble. Smoke. Terror. Mother. Recognition. Reunion.
Question. Evasion.
Bracelet. Hand. Understanding. Horror. Vengeance.
Exeunt.

With precision.
At thirteen hours and eleven minutes, Marji receives word from a sound (approximately 110db) and a subsequent radio report that a missile has struck Tavanir, the neighbourhood in which she has lived for the past fourteen years and six months. Her emotions comprise a broad spectrum: confusion, shock, panic, terror, and rage. She goes out into the street and calls for a taxi, which arrives at twenty-one hundred hours and sixteen minutes. The taxi drives at a speed of 65 miles per hour towards Marji’s residence, taking three lefts and a right, before coming to a halt at the top of the street. There is a crowd gathered of somewhat over forty people. She speaks to an official and gains egress. Her emotions have narrowed: now she feels only urgency. She walks at an uncharacteristically fast pace towards the end of the street. Her mother is there to greet her; they exchange words of relief. Marji enquires after the Baba-Levys, whose residence has been struck by an Iraqi missile. Her mother pretends ignorance of their whereabouts. In spite of her seeming composure, a careful observer will note that the muscles of her shoulders are tense beneath the dark cloth, that her eyes are over-bright. Marji’s mother attempts to usher her away. She will not go. On the street corner, towards the front of where the residence of the Baba-Levys once stood, she sees a hand, truncated exactly two inches below the wrist. Upon this wrist is a bracelet with seven beads bound by a silver chain, made from blue turquoise, previously belonging to the Iranian citizen known as Neda Baba-Levy. Neda Baba-Levy has been dead for eleven minutes. Immediately before the missile hit she had been playing Patience in the living room on the top floor of the apartment building. The cleanup crew will begin their work shortly, shovelling the rubble and the remains in metal tanks that are exactly ten feet by ten feet. They will then drive those metal tanks in white vans thirteen miles away from the centre of the city, and dispose of them in a place that is dark and hot and smells of oil.

Alternate perspective: Tehran.
The city has been dealt a wound. Dealt many wounds, but this is the newest, a gaping hole, a nothing where once was something. A missing tooth. A severed limb. There is no blood to show for it, only the dust and the rubble and the thick brownish smog.
A young woman walks within it, and it hears the tick of her heart, feels her fear as it feels its own, senses the shape that she spells out within it. She is brighter than most; she pulses. Her heart is unquiet, filled with vengeance, and with pain, and she is not long for this place, is already drifting towards the edge of its map. The city knows each one of its inhabitants, knows them intimately, and the marks they leave upon it are keenly felt. Each gunshot leaves a scar; each death is recorded, immortalised.
Here: a human hand, half-buried. For weeks afterwards the rain that falls upon the city streets is dark, filled with ashes.

Alternate perspective: Nera.
Nera’s mother taught her how to play Patience two weeks ago and since then she’s been at it every minute God sends, throwing cards down in rows and piles on any available surface, clapping her hands when she wins and hissing when she doesn’t. It’s not really work, she’s sure, because work and play aren’t remotely the same thing, and even if it was – well, who would know? Her mother, perhaps. But then she did some of her homework earlier, even though it was certainly against the Sabbath rules, and her mother definitely saw (Nera caught her disapproving look in the reflection from the kitchen window) but pretended not to notice. Her mother has become strangely selective about the things she notices and the things she does not notice. So has Nera, for that matter. Some days she can stand before the mirror for ten minutes or more, mesmerised by the things that have begun to happen to her as the years press onwards: the hair that has begun to grow, the hips that have begun to round, the weird shapes of her bones and muscles underneath the skin. When she goes out she swathes them in black. Even after Nera ceases, the changes will not.
At any rate, the world has more important things to worry about. She heard them talking about some of it yesterday when they thought she was asleep. Something about Iraqi scuds, whatever those were. Sounds like what you get on your hands when you do the washing-up. Their voices sounded serious, like someone had died. She turns a card over. Ace of Clubs: wrong again. She hisses, frustrated.
Seven-fourteen. The heavy clock on the living room wall ticks, on and on, into the quiet.