by Pegah Ouji
Unlike what neighbors say about ghosts, my brother, Hameed, does not follow me everywhere. I wish he would, his lanky legs tracing the curves of Kerman’s sidewalks, disappearing, when he’s tired of this world into a crack, like water seeped into sunbaked desert clay. I only see him when there’re ghost butterflies fluttering nearby.
Which is to say, not enough. Nowhere near enough. Never enough.
After school, I follow Maman to a fancy clothing store where faceless mannequins wear pretty dresses they can never enjoy. Maman palms the question mark of their hips, steps closer and back, cocking her head like an iguana. The sales’ lady, our neighbor’s just-graduated-high-school—but-failed-college-entrance-exam daughter hands Maman a cup of black tea. She pours into my palm crushed saffron rock candy and pats my head.
“This one with all the butterflies is so pretty, no Maryam?” Maman asks me, sipping her tea. I see my brother’s head poke out from the mannequin’s shoulder. It’s been months since I saw his ghost last. His smile is still the same size though I have breezed through four shoe sizes since he left, his head bald, his eyes like wilted zinnias. He hooks his thumbs, his fingers fanned out and moves them up, like a butterfly, lapping up towards the fluorescent lights mooning the room. When I look up, I see a kaleidoscope of ghost butterflies, covering the entire ceiling.
Hameed and I used to chase ghost butterflies in our backyard. Our parents could never see them no matter how many times we pointed them out with our fingers, “There! There!”
“No one has seen butterflies for since your grandfather was a child.” Baba would say, pressing up the brown frame of his glasses with a finger. He said other things too, kids, imagination, daydreams, grow up. But Hameed and I were too busy, tracing ghost butterfly wings with our pinkies, our fingertips sparkly with wing dust. Ghost butterflies perched on the tea kettle, hovered near the fireplace, lingered above the Adventures of Tom Sawers Farsi version in Baba’s dusty library. But since Hameed joined the ghost world, the butterflies waned too. At night, when I trace wing shapes on the blank canvas of my ceiling, I ask the moon, “When can I join the ghost world?”
She never answers, just waxes her crescent smile.
At Aza Dari gathering in the evening, Maman looks beautiful, hundreds of butterflies pressed into her new dress. As the bearded, black-dressed Noohe khun chants prayers for the ghost of my brother, Maman’s tears are dry. “It’s been three years” she whispers to aunties and uncles. “he’s in a better place. Isn’t that something?” she says. Baba’s mustache has become a bundle of gray and white strings. The Noohe khun begs God’s mercy for Hameed’s ghost. Aunties and uncles chomp on dates, sip hot chocolate in tiny glass cups., kiss my cheeks with their garlicy breaths.
What none of them see: Hameed, smiling through each crystal of our chandelier, flapping his palms up, like a butterfly. I take out the saffron rock candy, now a powder crushed in my pocket and thrust them up all towards the chandelier, watch Hameed’s smile become even more sweet.
When Maman shuts the door of my room behind her, I wait in the darkness for my wings to pierce out of my skin, to flit, fluttering away up, a kaleidoscope waiting.
Pegah Ouji is an Iranian American writer who writes in Farsi and English. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming from Joyland, Epiphany, Fugue, Split Lip among others. She has been a scholarship recipient from Kundiman, Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, Hudson Valley Writer’s Center, Literary Arts, Grub Street, and Shipman Agency. She was a 2024 Emerging Writer Fellow at Smokelong Quarterly.
Emerge Literary Journal 