The Chess Set

Since beginning secondary school two months earlier Tariq had found the chess club his refuge. So he had wanted the marble chess board from the instant that he had laid eyes on it. Even from the distance he could imagine the cool feel of the pieces under his fingers on a hot afternoon. His mother, however, had felt a complete lack of connection for it, having never bothered to learn the game, and admonishing his father for teaching him useless ‘time wasting skills’ as she referred to it. “First its chess, and soon he’ll be gambling and smoking,” she would complain. Besides which she was more concerned with the lack of water in their hotel room.

They had been in Isfahan for three days now visiting relatives. They had been on numerous picnics in the grounds of various mosques, wandered the narrow streets, marvelled at the clay buildings and generally exhausted his mother. Father was used to walking around, his job in the oil refinery made him used to climbing long ladders and examining pipes. He would walk on ahead of everyone. But mother, who worries generally was having a far harder time of it, especially since the strike at the water processing plant started. The hotel in which they were staying had been affected first, and the whole city was now getting up in arms. She was felt obliged to keep an eye on the bellboys as they ferried water up the room. They had spent the third afternoon walking in the great square, and it was there, in the covered labyrinthine bazaar that he saw it.

The boards sat a round an old man, whose long white beard emerged from beneath his amameh. He had noticed the board because it sat beneath the glimmer of a sodium lamp, lit from above it looked regal and holy at the same time. He had asked the price from the old seller, and reasoned that he would afford it if he saved his allowance for six months. But he wanted an advance from his parents to buy it now, as he had never seen a board like it. His father was quietly contented by his sons enthusiasm, but his mother was neither impressed nor interested. Upon their return from the bazaar that afternoon his constant topic of conversation was the chess board. He asked about it incessantly for the rest of the day. After several hours of incessant chatter about the board, much to his father’s delight, his mother finally agreed. Her mood had been lightened by the news of the end of the strike. She counted out the money for him, reminding him that he could forget about his pocket money for the next few months. She handed him an extra thousand tomans and told him to get a cab.

He ran excitedly through the hotel lobby and out into the street, dark now and crowded as the street hawker began to take up their positions outside the hotel. He was accosted by several as he came out. Cars jostled behind them in the street as the rush hour traffic began to descend and it was among them that he thrust his arm into the air. Almost immediately there was a cab in front of him, the corpulent driver sitting with a cigarette poking out from under the sharp bristles of his moustache. “Can you take me to Bazaar, and wait a sec while I buy something and then bring me back here? I need you to wait for me,” he said as he tentatively opened the door of the car. The driver looked at his suspiciously, the smoke curling from the end of his cigarette and diffusing through the cab. “Why not,” he said finally, “but only if you pay me half on arrival and half on return.” They agreed the fare and Tariq got into the cab. The drivers attempts at small talk irked Tariq; his interest in the fact that Tariq spoke Farsi with an English accent belittled him, or so he felt. The one sided conversation eventually petered out into the din of the evening traffic. The excitement of the purchase was filling Tariq with each moment.

As soon as they arrived, the boy shot out of the car. He bolted through the huge square, crossing the vast polo field that was once used by the great Shah Abbas in a sprint, and ran entered the Bazaar from the entrance by the palace of Ali Qapu. He ran through the maze, dodging the barrow boy and carts loaded with various goods. On one corner a man stood with a hawk on his arm, not that Tariq could spare the time to stare. Eventually navigating through the noise and bustle of the Bazaar, he finally arrived at the old mans stand. He walked up slowly and approached the old man, who was dozing, a cup of mint chai getting cold before him. After a brief haggling session, done more as a formality than for any other purpose he had bought the object of his desire. He waited impatiently as the old man carefully placed each delicate piece into its elegant wooden box, each piece taking its own position in the velvet lined casing. Once it was wrapped and in his hands, he began the journey back to the cab driver.

The driver was waiting with all the other cab drivers at the taxi rank, smoking another cigarette down to near the nub. He stared, almost glaring at the boy walking towards him. His huge paunch sagged over the cusp of his belt, forcing his waisline down under the weight as he stood. Tariq jumped into the front of the cab, oblivious to the driver and more absorbed in the white package in his hands. The driver flicked the butt away and got back into the car, wriggling on the beads that lined his seat before starting the engine.

They drove in silence, the boy absorbed in his new toy, and so not noticing when the car turned from the main road. It crept along the narrow alleyways, getting further and further from the high road, which was illuminated for the upcoming Eid festival. Slums passed the outside of the window, and still Tariq remained oblivious. Slowly but very surely the world that he knew outside the car was vanishing, and he too taken by the board to notice. Eventually, he lack of car horns awoke him from his trance. “Is this the way we came?” he asked, looking out of the rear window.
“It’s a shortcut,” the driver replied. He seemed to be getting comfortable for a long ride. The alley’s darkness closed in on them. After a great while of quiet the driver began to speak. “You know young man, normally when we take people on a return journey, the custom is to pay for the first leg up front. Tariq noticed his beginning to fumble for something with his left hand in the car door, fishing for something as he manoeuvred. “ One time, there was this opium addict who jumped into the back just about where you’re sitting now. He wanted me to drop him at a place uptown, which just between you and me, is where most of the dens are. It’s a real nasty part of town. Now it’s not my job to worry about what people get up to with their bodies, so I agreed to take him. Bearing in mind that it was late and I really wanted to get home to a nice gormeh sabzi, but I thought what the hell, he’d be paying me for it.” Tariq shifted uneasily in his seat. The driver continued his anecdote, “So I drove all the way across town. When we arrived I stopped the car outside this den, and this guy tells me he’ll just be a minute, goes inside. I wait and wait and wait for 45 minutes in the street, all the pimps and addicts coming in and out of all these buildings.” He continued to fish in the door. Tariq listened to the story while looking out around for some landmark, anything that might guide him back to the hotel. The driver found what he was looking for, Tariq noticing a rectangular block in his hand. “ And so eventually I got tired of waiting around, so I went in there, and held this knife to his throat and I said, ‘give me the money that you owe me or I’ll slit your throat right here and now.” As the words flowed from his mouth he was holding the knife to the boys throat. He breathed deeply. The driver looked at Tariq and they paused. The chess set felt cold beneath his fingertips, its weight pressing down onto his lap like a block of lead. The cold of the knife blade, the heat from the drivers hand, and thick black hairs on his arm all etching themselves into his memory, perhaps his final memory. The darkness of the night became liquid, and he felt like he was drowning in it.

After a moment the driver chuckled, as though reminiscing on a joke from his school days. He withdrew the knife and returned it to its place in the car door. They drove on in silence for a while, the crunching of the old gears reverberating the in hot vehicle. Tariq quietly removed a piece from the set and held it in his had, a rook perhaps. It’s cool stone warmed in his palm. The car turned, and as if with a flourish they appeared at the front of the hotel. The driver was full of smiles now, his fat face creasing into a a wide grin and hollow dimples. “But then again you can always tell the good ones from the bad,” he said, as he stepped outside and opened the passenger door, rather like he might for an old lady or his wife.

Tariq did not remember paying his, or his offer of a guided tour of the city after that. He only recalled the weight of the board in his hands, and the doorman asking if he was alright.