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A new waiting game at the hospital before you’re fit to leave. I put cherries on the bridge of my nose while leaning back. Each one that rolls left means yes. Each one that rolls right, no. Will we ever leave together? Three right. Three left. The last one, left too. Yes.

On a whim I invent alternate versions of us. In Paris we eat cheeseburgers with too much salt. You tell me you’ve slept with someone else. We laugh about it, but I don’t share my mille-feuille. Would I still love you there? Three cherries, yes. Four cherries, no.

In Senegal. We drink bissap juice in a high-rise. During sunset we peel spirals from pear skins. Who can make the longest snake? You tell me you’ve slept with someone else. Would I still love you there? Two cherries, yes. Four cherries, no.

In Tangier. No, no, and no. I’d leave you there and love would leave from me.

Two nurses wheel you out to the curb.

‘Ready to go home?’ they ask.

You are finally mine to take. I don’t know how to be a caregiver. Do I pat the top of your head? I should have rehearsed being gentler, but it would hardly stick, like a terrible actor who drops his accent midway through a performance.

We reach my uncle’s apartment. Will you react to the roses? For ceremony, I took the vases out of the closet and set them under the lamps with the largest bulbs. I’ve arranged them as a minor distraction from what I can’t bring myself to change. In the living room, two cups. On the floor, a sock, a shoe.

I expect a far more dramatic scene when you enter our apartment, as if you’ll size up what you’d left behind, the glasses, and all the dander in its place. But you are expressionless. You inhale deeply, like one does before passing a dumpster, and you excuse yourself into the room safe from the memory. We don’t bring up the conversation that made you run away.

I lock the front door. Alone, we kiss. Your lips are swollen. As a welcome, I end up on my knees. At your feet, always. It’s where I am most like myself. You feel too dirty to even shower yet. There’s only so much cleaning that can take place in a hospital with a sponge. But I don’t care. I dive into the stench of pooled crotch sweat in unwashed seams. Gray jeans, once black. While blowing you, I think about your clothes. They were cruel to make you squeeze back into your old pants from the night of the attack. If I’d noticed, I would have brought you a different pair.

Once your dick is in my mouth, it becomes commonplace. I’m curious to see how much you can take despite all your lacerations. My pleasure is inseparable from your pain. I make a few noises to prove I’m still present. Your eyes roll back, maybe because you want me to stop. I try not to sneeze when your pubes tickle my nostrils. Part of me hopes to taste the other young man. Your pleasure is inseparable from my pain.

‘The old war. The old war.’ A man mumbles to himself on his way through our alley.

You inch toward the bed, struggling to remove the hospital gown that also acts as your shirt. You reach for a painkiller after I wipe my chin clean. I look up at the skylight in the living room. At this hour I hope to see a face above the glass, someone who has found his way to the top of the seventh floor of the Sohlem Apartments, which we like to call Sodom. No faces above. Sometimes a few rats scurry past. They are the only witnesses to our version of paradise.

‘Did you eat?’ I ask. You shake your head. I’m not used to being the one in power, but pain has made you malleable. I can whisper thoughts so they catch deep enough in you. When you are upright again, when you have your hands around my neck, you might say my words like they’re yours.

Let’s leave. Far enough, but not too far.

‘Humiliate me,’ you say from the corner of the bed. I’m not sure what you mean. I dab the dotted ring of dried blood around your lips. Death used to be distant. A dead crow, a body lowered into a grave. Not now. Outside, a truck sells honeydew for those still awake.

‘Ripe and cheap.’

The vendor repeats it three times on a megaphone. Ripe and cheap.

You pucker your mouth to try and apologize. I kiss you to shut you up. I lick your lips. Bruised, they sting. I press your velvet gums with my tongue. I rub them one way, smooth. The other way, your chin fills with blood. You moan. You try to apologize.

‘You shouldn’t speak until your teeth have set.’ I wonder what your voice will sound like over that chasm. Maybe they kicked your vocal cords and shook the box. Did a man find a tooth stuck to his shoe after you were down?

I squeeze an orange to your mouth. You used to boil them to remove the bitterness from their skin. On a dare, you drank the liquid they left behind, all pith, just to impress me. Maybe with these memories, you will agree to my plan. The juice spills down your throat. A spurt, a cut-open vein. You moan. Pain—it comes back.

I pull out the box of bootleg VHS tapes and search for a quieter film to fill the silence.

You repeat yourself. ‘Humiliate me. So we’re even.’

‘I don’t need to.’

‘Please. Humiliate me. Before we move on to what comes next.’

What comes next?

‘The old war.’

The same man paces up and down our street. We’re sure he has no home. Every morning he sells walnuts in emptied pita bread bags. He cracks the walnuts at night, puts on his army beret in the morning, and walks down the streets trying to sell what he can. His hands are black with walnut skins. His lips are dry from a diet of almonds in brine.

I invite him up. He tries to find something to say. ‘The old war.’ I undo his jacket once he’s inside. ‘The old war.’

You breathe out of your nose now, some recent habit after having your jaw wired to heal. It makes it easier to gauge your mood. You breathe heavier when I’m close to him. I hold my cheek to his neck. Mouth open, you finally show your new teeth.

‘Is this okay?’ I ask the man.

He nods. I take off his coat and place it on the couch. Even if he’s here for my own selfish game, I treat him kindly. The slightest kiss will be something he’ll replay with himself while cracking walnuts, which I smell in his mouth, curdled, without the aid of a toothbrush to clean off the plaque. But you stay in the shadows just to watch me put his hand on his own dick to see if I can make him cream at our feet.

Accidentally, you scratch an itch you’ve forgotten was there.

‘God!’ The pain makes you double over.

I turn to the walnut vendor. ‘Take anything you want in the kitchen.’ He follows the sound of the refrigerator out of the room. ‘Are you all right?’ I ask when I’m by your side. ‘What can I do?’

You hear the crack in my voice. I could joke that my throat is hoarse because your cum is infecting my tonsils again. But I don’t make light. This startles you even more than pain. We know the truth. If there was one more kick, if someone aimed their foot a little higher up, you’d be dead.

‘Mahtob is my wife,’ you whisper. I recognize your tone. Aggressive, yes, but also exhausted from running through the different scenarios. ‘Isn’t running to Isfahan enough?’

‘I used to think so. But there needs to be a change.’

‘What change?’

‘We’ll be safe . . . once you remarry.’ After a pause, you get what I mean. We’ll be safe when I’m your bride.

‘I can’t ask that of you,’ you say. The painkillers start the dance of making you drowsy.

‘I have to. I’ll do it all.’

‘But—’

‘There are no other options. I just need you to agree.’

I head out of the room to give you time to think.

‘Can I get you something to eat?’ I ask our guest in the kitchen. He’s entranced by the clean water I keep in a pitcher.

He gestures at it. ‘May I?’

‘Of course.’

I look for a glass, but he’s already chosen a tulip-shaped crystal vase, freshly washed for your return. He fills it with as much water as it can take. Blueness takes hold of the living room. You’ve turned on the TV. I stand on the threshold of the kitchen and the living room to see what film you’ve chosen.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, poorly dubbed in Persian. It was the only version you could find. The translation might not be faithful, but I get the gist. Lana Turner and John Garfield embrace each other while plotting to kill her husband.

‘What if we get caught?’ his dubbed voice asks her.

‘We won’t. Not if we’re smart about it.’

The tape warps for a minute, some transfer error from torrent to tape. A large wave contorts their faces.

‘This must be love,’ he says.

‘It’s got to be,’ she responds. ‘Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth it.’ With that, I know you’re on board. You’ve chosen the scene as proof. Your eyes roll back already on the way to sleep. I’ll never forget the violence at their edge.
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The above extract is reproduced with permission Navid Sinaki’s debut novel Medusa of the Roses, out now with Serpent’s Tail in the UK and Grove Atlantic in North America.

Navid Sinaki is an artist, filmmaker, and poet. He was born in Tehran and currently lives in Los Angeles. His works have screened at museums and art houses around the world, including Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Lincoln Center, British Film Institute, REDCAT, and Cineteca Nacional in Mexico. His writing has most recently appeared in BOMB Magazine. He is a professor at UCLA Extension and a film programmer, most notably at the Echo Park Film Center www.navidsinaki.com.