e-flux Journal
issue #97
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At his spot by an escalator in Madison Square
Garden—potential Tests would pass there on their way to
Penn Station, the subway, or the lower-level arcade all
day—Kade stood behind the small folding table he’d
bought at Staples for the occasion. Brushing aside the
temporary embarrassment of looking like an unlicensed
street vendor and trying for once to be organized, he had
neatly arranged twelve bracelets on the table to his left,
and on the right a flat-screen touchpad to log the names
and GPS locations of the Hosts and to monitor bracelet
charge and activity.
Folded into neat squares, the black headscarves were
piled in an open cardboard box beneath the table. Kade
had attached an electric blue cord to the messenger bag
containing the bracelets and secured it to his left ankle
with a bike lock.
Kristen Alvanson
XYZT
Amir glanced along the street running parallel to the north
entrance of Tehran’s bazaar. It was a busy road, and the
city had installed barriers so that pedestrians couldn’t dart
out into traffic—common practice just about everywhere
in Iran. Here, pedestrians had to use the underpass to get
to the other side of the street, unless they wanted to walk
a few blocks out of their way to cross at the traffic light.
Amir scanned the scene. Everything was going to happen
simultaneously, and he wanted to get into position ahead
of time. Tehrani naps lasted from just after lunch until
about 4:00 p.m. By 4:30 most retail workers were heading
back to open their shops, and around 5:00, places started
to reopen their doors for business. Like the Mexican
siesta, this sleep during the hottest part of the day was
also practiced in the winter out of habit, although over the
last few years, as the economy had worsened, naps had
become more of a luxury. Amir noted that the bazaar was
not as chaotic as usual. Saturdays being regular workdays
in Iran, he assumed it was slow this afternoon because of
the holidays.
On the ground he had laid out a woven cloth like those
used by the local street vendors to display their wares,
thinking he might want to sit on it when he wasn’t dealing
with the Tests. Maybe he’d even have a chance to come
up with a way to ask out Estella. As he waited for the
satellite call to connect, he turned on the touchpad to
check that it was charged and online.
Kade’s voice crackled in his ear, broken up with static and
sounding remote, as if the signal had to cross a space
greater than the physical distance between the US and
Iran.
“Kade?”
“It’s me. Are you in position?” Kade yelled.
“Ready to start, how about you?”
“I’m set up in the area to the right of the escalator near
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MSG. I’ve been here for an hour already, what took you so
…” His voice faded.
“Kade? Maybe we should hang up. The orbit is worse than
I thought. I wish we could have gone with LEO.” Amir
waited for his friend’s response, but there was only
feedback on the line. He enunciated into the bristling
static: “I’m starting.”
Dasht-e Lut: Fire Girl
Hot sensation. Heat on your face. You squint and see dust
swirling around. The ground goes up, the sky down. Hell
as orange as Heaven. Burnt cadmium grains meet waves
of shifting dunes. All hot. All iron-oxide orange.
You pull off your jacket and throw it down. You rip open
your shirt. Your skin burns more. You try to retrieve your
jacket but it has melted into the clumps of rock. Red
fingers, red bones. Grasp your shirt to close it again. The
heat decreases. The sand grains are now barred from
hitting your chest, but they do not stop there. They move
towards your head, getting stuck in your nose, your mouth,
your eyes.
Visibility is not good. It’s best not to look ahead into the
distance. As far as you can see, nothing but orange dust.
Look down or look low. You try to move your feet and
become aware of the soles burning, emitting a noisome
toasted wheat odor. The heat comes faster. Swift here. All
is swift.
Noise of the storm—the roar of an overworked furnace,
then hissing gusts of wind. Orange-out. Suffocating sky.
Sauna stench one second, campfire smoke the next. All
hot. Flame-hued. Rippling sand dunes like rows of
weather-shifted trim. Your teeth hurt. You hadn’t realized
there is a place on earth that looks like the craters of Mars.
Abiotic. Incalescence, you think it cruel on your already
charred body. Crueler still the speed.
You forgot about Iran before you arrived. Fall to the
ground. One moment you think, What kind of person am I?
The next, you have forgotten who you are.
The Jinn’s blue light pierces through the color with a force
that only true complementaries can muster. Her light is
cool blue, but hot to the touch. Jinns are smokeless fire.
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A person’s body can call a Jinn. You did not know you had
called her.
She makes no mistakes, punctures the orange in one
straight shot. Jinn appears before you, first as glowing
absence defined by orange dust, then visible in
quasi-human form.
You ask, “Where are we?”
“Hottest place on earth.”
She taps the center of your back, cracking the bones in
your body in one smooth motion. Next, she deactivates the
constraints of the time and space in which you move.
Blue squaring around you, as if looking out from inside a
bottle of Bombay Sapphire. You close your eyes. When
they reopen, you are on the back of Jinn. The body before
you is solid. You hold tight.
Jinn shoots up like a rocket, kicking up sand mounds and
stirring up the air. Elements collide—aggravated, they turn
to deeper hues while pluming below you. The heat is still
there, digging into your flesh, but now accelerated in the
speed of its destruction.
The Jinn’s burst of speed creates an arc in the sky, curve
of the Gateway Arch. You and Jinn touch down six
hundred leinters from where you were, although in your
state you are unable to gauge distance. As soon as Jinn
hits ground, she springs up again. Over and over Jinn
jumps with you clinging to her back. So fast is Jinn that her
bounds leave trails of blue afterglow, like a row of arched
plates on a dinosaur’s back. Jump-curving out of the waves
of heat. At each touchdown, the heat decreases. Trail after
trail out of the desert.
Jinn has been jumping for over a jarct but you can’t tell
exactly how long. Below, you can see the plateau—flat,
hardened soil full of cracks. Here, Jinn’s touchdowns hit
the ground harder than they did in the dunes.
Over time, the landscape changes again, from desert to
rolling mountains. Air becomes breathable again. The
heat, while still scorching, is bearable.
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upon hundreds of cone-shaped rock structures emerging
from the earth, all over the incline of the hill, each rock two
or three stories high and, she says, ten leinters wide at the
base.
Suddenly, it becomes clear to you—the tinge and
indentations of the rocks: honeycomb. L and of the
Beehive.
You soon make out that the rocks are dwellings, with
doors and windows carved out of the stone, paths and
wooden rafters weaving around. Jinn’s landing is precise: a
small clearing between two abodes. The larger of the two
has smoke coming through a cutout chimney.
A quick, inexplicable motion, and you are lying on the
ground. The surface of the path has been cleared,
although snow remains at the edges. You are so numb
that what must be frigid ground doesn’t make you cringe,
although you are conscious enough to realize that your
body can’t withstand any amount of freeze for
long—especially after being burned by the desert.
“Brought you to an algid place.” Jinn does not seem
winded after the journey.
“I would have died without your help in the desert.”
“True, humans can’t survive in Dasht-e Lut, but I have
done nothing for you … although I can, before I leave you
with the hive.” Jinn helps you sit up. “I can tell you what I
see, if you’d like.”
“What are my injuries?”
“Not that kind of seeing. You need to warm up and drink
the mineral water, and you will survive.”
She pauses to look up the paths leading to the higher
dwellings, then leans down next to your ear. “What I see
…” She surveys the area again. “You will lose your faith.”
After saying it, she shakes your shoulders in rounded
motions, and bones crack as your body realigns.
“Not sure what you mean. Can you explain?” It’s a lot of
work getting the words out.
The speed of the jumps has increased. You close your
eyes.
She stands, takes a deep breath, and blows blue toward
the door of the closest house.
The wind feels cooler, soothing the skin like aloe vera. No
longer able to hold on, your arms fall to your sides, yet
something keeps you attached to Jinn.
What are you? You shiver.
Jinn slows down near Sabalan, and you open your eyes. A
valley between the snow-covered mountains. Further
along, umber-toned formations jut from the ground,
winding, gracefully weaving towards the sky, their curved,
rocky peaks stationary yet in apparent motion. Hundreds
The wooden door and metal window on the second floor
shake as if they are being blown out by a hurricane. She
nods in your direction, then leaps up so fast you can’t
make out an afterglow.
Slowly, the door opens.
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Ocean Drive: Vice City
He sipped his Bloody Mary from the outside café
overlooking Ocean Drive, having picked the waitress’s
suggestion over his Host’s because, as Dennis Hopper
said, “Heineken, fuck that shit!” Palms, clear sky, and the
beach right across the street: a replica of the layout in
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He’d also seen the location in
TV shows based in the city— Dexter was his favorite.
Two women in bikinis passed him on the Miami Beach
sidewalk, their skin glimmering in the sun, towels in their
totes and iPods in their hands, just like the movie stars he
had jerked off to on Oil Nationalization Day. He had
watched three films that day, DVDs bought on the black
market—aka his shady friend Reza who had been born the
same year as him and lived down the street. Reza, who
claimed he was a “writer,” had quit university to lounge
around his bedroom all day ripping DVDs for customers.
Since nearly all Western films are banned in Iran, it was a
profitable business, and the ripper was able to travel to the
United Arab Emirates and Malaysia for his product.
He had watched the films on his desktop alone in his
room. Oil Nationalization Day was notable because he had
jerked off not once but three times. The films were full of
sex. It happened like that: his friend would get films in
batches. Thirty films with titles that started with N, or all
the big Hollywood films from 2001, or every film made by a
certain director. Sometimes it felt like he became a
connoisseur of a genre whether he wanted to or not, like
the time Reza sold him all of the Pink Panther movies at
once and he watched them all in one day, because there
was nothing else to do.
The girls were now way down the sidewalk, his eyes still
locked on their swaying derrieres, but as they receded into
the distance, even though there was no aliasing, he
realized that what he was experiencing there on the street
felt less real than it had at home in Iran. Maybe because
games scrap the whole landscape except for the most
essential components—not the details, but those kinds of
things the brain doesn’t overlook, those that inscribe the
character of the environment in the mind. Color, the
outlines of buildings, the textures of facades, the geometry
of roads, and the invisible lines that bring skyline, beach,
asphalt, palms, buildings, and passersby together without
you even consciously noticing them. You could drive
through an actual city and never notice how the place
looks and feels at a specific turn or junction, but in video
games you never miss it, and it sticks in the mind forever.
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He remembered how, back home, Esmail had been offline
for a few months. When he had checked up on his friend,
he said he had been on vacation.
He asked Esmail where he’d gone.
“Miami,” was the response, which sounded implausible
given Esmail’s situation, so he had asked again. Eventually
his friend admitted, “We’ve been playing Vice City for
three months straight.”
Americans have their cruises, Iranians their virtual
vacations.
Ghamsar: Rose Essence
Suddenly I find myself in another room, a good deal larger.
A kitchen, but there are no stoves. A few women and men
busy working. Along the wall a series of plastic tanks six
foot wide, each placed under a faucet protruding from the
wall, from which small drips seep into the containers. A
man stirs one of the tanks with a wooden stick that’s as
long as he is tall. Scent of Glade Jubilant Rose. They are
standing around a table mixing something in
industrial-sized bowls.
“I think I’m lost,” I say.
“Took a wrong turn?” The man stirs faster.
“Yes, sorry to interrupt. Can you tell me the way back to
the tea house?”
“Of course. Have a seat.” He points to an empty wooden
stool next to the table. “Can you do us a favor before you
go?”
“I can do that.”
“Try our Faloodeh before we serve it to the customers?”
“Sure. What is it I’ll be trying?”
He tells me it’s like a Persian kind of sorbet, but it sounds
better than it looks. While they scoop a heap of the white
slush into my bowl, he adds that the base consists of
frozen starch noodles. They add rose water from the
liter-size bottle sitting on the table. The tanks along the
wall are filled with rose essence, he says, which is being
extracted from large piles of rose petals outside. He says
the essence has been fermenting for months.
I taste the sorbet. Cold shock as the freeze drips down my
throat. I wait to let the palate respond.
Instead, illumination! Before me, I see a Persian Miniature
like the one my uncle brought back from the Orient years
ago … although this is no dusty painting from centuries
past. No, this is something more convoluted, bristling and
teeming with life. I swallow another spoonful. The
Miniature fills out in front of me. There is no visual space
that is not covered with elaborate patterning, vibrant
figures in wild dress, animals, plants. I can no longer call it
a Miniature: it is life-size. I take another spoonful. Cold
churning in my stomach, the scene moving before my
eyes, alive.
Strangely, the image preserves its flatness as life builds
around the core of the main scenes, radiating from the
center. Before my eyes, figures in turbans and robes doing
all sorts of things I cannot fully grasp. Things happening.
The more I eat, the more I see.
In the center I see a man in a long-sleeved red smock that
covers his whole body. He is wearing knee-high leather
boots. I know because he leans back on a pillow and
extends his booted leg towards a woman. She is fully
clothed and looks away from him while caressing the
leather. Meanwhile, he looks in the opposite direction,
grabbing the arm of another woman and pulling her
towards the party. They all lounge beneath a wall painted
baby blue with gold ornamental patterns. The
boot-caressing woman glances down to a lanky man
walking near a bush bursting with rust-colored flowers. On
both of his shoulders he carries covered food platters, the
curves of the covers rubbing against his beard. Above him,
a cleric in a flowing gown with a turban and an ancient
white beard reads from a scroll in his hand, gradually
unfurling it as he speaks.
Below him to the left, a beautiful pink tent with Arabic
lettering scrawled on the side is held up by an orange pole.
The flaps open just enough for me to see a man in a brown
shirt with a royal-blue apron stirring a pot on the ground,
smaller than the tanks of rose essence. Two women are
with him, one in cherry red, the other in orange. Orange
lady is holding a piece of meat on a stick from which she
takes dainty bites. Cherry lady cradles a long loaf of bread,
singing to it. Outside the tent, rocks line the ground and
petite flowers push up from the yellowish dirt. Nearby, a
horse drinks from silver water. Another blue horse loiters
behind the pink tent, with his friend, the camel. A tiny man
saddles the camel and mounts it; he wears a green suit
with red sleeves, and has a bluish-white beard and pointed
hat. Off he goes, seated in a saddle of the same blue as the
cook’s apron.
As he rides away, the tip of his hat points toward an elderly
woman carrying an oversized marbled portfolio with the
help of a man who pulls as she pushes. He becomes lost
behind the striped black-and-white pattern that separates
the vignettes.
Further above: a bedroom, a seduction scene. She’s
wearing a silk robe that looks more Chinese than Persian.
He glances up at her in admiration. Another woman’s
torso—a torso, nothing else—is slatted sideways, hanging
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between the side of the roof, a red-white-blue patterned
rectangle, and the corner of a Persian rug which is
guarded by its owner from above.
Further from the center, the stories become less
straightforward. Less straightforward! Two women with
head coverings share a mysterious round item, passing it
back and forth. A man in blue carries firewood on his back,
held there with strings. He must have come down from the
high rocks, past the orange tree. A musician tries to sell a
silver container with stones embedded on the top to a man
with a rearing horse. Flying through the scene, a chunky
albino demon with horns waves a staff in its hand. A
couple of men barter over a bulbous copper vessel. The
buyer wears a small purse embellished with gold
embroidery hanging from a chain. A zoned-out man stands
holding a long pipe that touches the ground—the way he
is holding it, at first it looks like a golf club.
Birds hide in trees holding private conferences. A
see-through square, next to the long rectangle filled with a
navy-blue floral pattern, next to a bigger see-through
rectangle … all taking up visual space at the edge of the
story. Will they be populated sometime in the future? I
wait, nothing changes. I start to become overwhelmed by
the effort of keeping track of the scene, all the details.
Rose ice going to my head. A shifty camel looking east,
and opposite, another one, just as shifty, looking west.
Madison: Easter Sunday
Rouzbeh Rabiee attempted to work out how many hours
he had been in the US. He had become increasingly
troubled at the strike of each hour. Confused by the
Tehran time still showing on his wristwatch, he resorted to
counting on his fingers, counting off not ten but twelve
hours since he had felt Iran’s sun on his face. He was
pretty sure it had been twelve hours.
Rouzbeh could tell that the Millers were just as keen for
him to leave as he was to get back home. Calls made from
the Miller’s home in Wisconsin were not going through.
No one could make sense of the strange noise at the other
end of the line.
Rouzbeh’s thoughts brightened for a minute as he sat on
the single bed in the extra bedroom. What if the
experiment had not worked as it had been described? He
was already well over the three-hour time frame. From his
childhood, he remembered the unauthorized translation of
the Narnia books, with its badly photocopied illustrations,
and wondered whether, when he finally made it back to
Iran, it would be as if no time had passed, and they
wouldn’t even have realized he had been gone. He
nervously ran his hand over the mustard-colored
bedspread. He was, he thought, quite lucky that the
Millers had an extra room for him to stay in overnight,
although Rouzbeh wasn’t looking forward to being
dragged along to “church” tomorrow. Maybe he wouldn’t
still be here in the morning. He got up from the bed and
glanced out at the snow-blanketed backyard, before
pulling the canvas curtains closed.
He walked over to the dresser, where Beverly had placed a
number of toiletries, a set of forest-green towels and an
unused T-shirt of Paul’s to sleep in. She had apologized for
the “loudness” of the shirt, which was bright red, and
featured a black-and-white cartoon animal wearing a red
sweater with a big letter “W” on it. The shirt had been a
holiday gift from Paul’s employer, she had said, and it was
all they had that was new. Rouzbeh looked through the
selections, picking up the boxes and bottles and reviewing
the brands. Unlike older generations of men in Iran who
were for the most part uninterested in brands or fashion,
Rouzbeh, although in his thirties, was more closely aligned
with the younger generations of boys who enjoyed
consumer products, especially those from the West. He
recognized all of the brands: Crest toothpaste, Colgate
toothbrush (medium), Gillette Series gel and disposable
shaver, Axe deodorant, Aveda shampoo and conditioner.
Rouzbeh carefully balanced the pile as he opened the door
and tiptoed down the hall toward the bathroom Beverly
had pointed out for him to use.
The overly long Easter service gave Rouzbeh all the more
reason to watch the clock, and he could hardly contain his
impatience. Once the interminable sermon was over, the
congregation joined the choir in a number of hymns while
the ushers began to distribute green velvet pouches with
wooden handles protruding from all sides. The pouches
were passed from pew to pew, and each family put in
either a white envelope or money as they went by, the
handles swinging, the pouches turning in perpetual
motion. As a pouch reached the Millers, Paul placed his
white envelope inside. Rouzbeh grabbed a wooden handle
with one hand and placed a few rial notes in before
handing it off to the woman on his right. As he completed
the transaction, he thought to himself mordantly: here,
they are outright asking for money, and hence the patrons
are provided with a seat. In the mosque, we’re not asked
for this kind of religious taxation, and that’s why we have
to sit on the floor.
The congregation read the Lord’s Prayer, which was
immediately followed by the Communion with Our Risen
Lord. The pastor declaimed, “Welcome to the Lord’s
Table! Please proceed to communion at the direction of
the ushers. After receiving the bread and wine, those who
desire may go to the altar rail for prayer. Please return to
your seat by way of the side aisles.”
Slowly, during the singing of Hymns 148, 352, 144, and
145, the congregation made its way up to the front of the
church. They stood in front of the pastor, who popped a
white disk into each mouth, then they moved along the
line to a table of miniature glasses. Each took one and
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drank its contents in one gulp, placing the empty glass on
the next table. Like the offering pouch, it reminded
Rouzbeh of an assembly line. All of the participants knew
what to do, and so the happening was delivered efficiently
and flawlessly.
stuffed the chocolate in his mouth.
Their pew’s turn was nearing. Paul turned to Rouzbeh. “I
suppose you won’t want to go up. Do you mind staying
here with the kids while Beverly and I go?”
“When you are older, you’ll think differently.”
“Muslim?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure I will,” answered Rouzbeh with resignation.
A moment later, Rouzbeh was relieved to suddenly feel the
same sickening lurches in the stomach as when he had
arrived. Goodbye Narnia …
When his parents were nearly to the pastor, Troy leaned
over to Rouzbeh and whispered, “Thanks, we hate going
up there.”
X
“Someday, you’ll think differently.”
“I don’t think so.” Troy took a piece of candy from the
Easter Bunny out of his pocket and started to open the
wrapper, chocolate smudged around the corners of his
mouth.
This text is a series of excerpts from XYZT by Kristen
Alvanson, forthcoming in April 2019 from Urbanomic.
All images by Kristen Alvanson from the series Photos
from Iran (2006-2009).
“You’ll find your religion.”
“I’ll be what you are.” The child looked up at the Test as he
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