Melmedas – a story from Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf

Some days ago an Iranian friend told me about Melmedas, a two-tailed mermaid from Hormuz island.

Hormuz Island, a small island in the Persian Gulf, is largely unknown nowadays, but once, it was one of the most important harbors in the middle east and one of the richest trading cities in the world. Hormuz Island was legendary, a well-known metaphor for wealth in the Western world.
The island is small and completely barren – it’s all rocks with a few shrubs here and there. There is no source of water. The sun is hot and white all year round.
Hormuz island still has some treasures: Its colored rocks, a fascinating landscape of deep red, ochre, and blue, which makes it unique in the world and beloved by Iranian artists.

Due to some strange circumstances, a few years ago, I ended up on Hormuz island.

The sun was about to set in Bandar Abbas when I entered the ferry to Hormuz island. It was a small ferry, and there were not many people on it. There was a congregation of bearded Mullahs and a few women wrapped in flowered hijabs, hiding their eyes behind masks that were clearly of African heritage.
Many people who live here are descendants of African slaves. You can sense Africa and India, on their food, in their clothes, in their music.
The South of Iran is a confusing place. I’ve been to many cultural melting pots, but this place, maybe because it is so desolate, so barren, gives you a feeling that is hard to describe. You cannot describe this place as a “melting pot”, because what you see does not feel whole, it feels fragmented.
It somehow makes the needle of your inner compass spin restlessly. You walk through the bazaars, one moment you think you are in India; the next moment you are in Africa. Things feel familiar, but the place as a whole feels infinitely foreign, foreign to itself even. You feel like you are everywhere, and nowhere.

On the ferry, there were some women. We tried to talk, but their English was worse than my Farsi, which already was barely existent. They couldn’t believe that I was alone and kept asking me about my shohare, which means husband in Farsi.

Before I had reached it, I knew that this island was a very improbable place to find myself in.

There was no hotel or restaurant. I was sleeping on a carpet in an empty room next to the ocean and ate in an informal restaurant in the living room of some family. Hormuz Island was a few houses, a small port, and a couple of fishermen on the beach. And the rocks.
There were landscapes of blood-red rocks and metallic beaches with silver sand so hot that you almost couldn't touch it. On the coast, men were carving huge fantastical ships out of wood that seemed out of space and time, and there was a sad Portuguese fort, decayed, displaced, almost gone, infinitely far away in time. Inside, you found a couple of stray dogs.

There was not much more on this strange island.

But now I know that two-tailed mermaids live on this island as well. What fascinates me about the Melmedas is that unlike the Melusina, two-tailed mermaid from Northern Europe, who has spread her tails joyfully in a gesture that feels almost sexual, her tails are folded over each other, which gives her an air of reserve, of prudence, maybe of hostility. They remind me of scissors. Like other female water spirits, embodying lust and danger, the Melmedas favorite pastime is to entice men. They appear in the shape of a beautiful young woman, hiding her two fishtails under the water. Once the man is in her net, turns into an ugly old woman and rips him into pieces with her fishtails.

I wonder what the fishermen from Hormuz would have told me about them.

Forbidden trees and nameless flowers

It’s the first of May, and you have a coffee on the square and then go for a walk into the forest. It is already late, four o’clock. 
You step into the forest and into the fragrance of the eucalyptus that welcomes you like a hug from a loved one. You breathe in, but it feels like breathing out.
You love the eucalyptus, but you also feel a bit guilty about it. Because you know it’s a bad tree, a tree that causes wildfires. But how can a tree be bad. It’s just a migrant, like you. And it’s just living its truth, like you do. Like you try to do. 

The fern that seams the forest path now stands so high that it almost reaches your collarbone. You walk up Talai and across the hills to Armea. You love the sound of these places almost as much as you love the smell of the eucalyptus trees. You walk through Talai and Armea, and one part of the enjoyment of going there is their beautiful names and to have the occasion to think them, to say them, to feel them, to live them, now I am in Talai, now I am in Armea. Talai and Armea, in the hills, silent houses with shut windows and empty flower gardens here and there, and vegetable gardens where sometimes you meet an old woman bent under the sun, and always, at some point, like an explosion, the hysterical bark of an invisible dog behind a fence that one day, you are sure, will give you a heart attack. 

One path, a secret path right through the forest, has become overgrown, and you can’t walk there anymore. It’s a path you remember well, and also with whom you walked there, seven years ago, in those nights where the forest was a dark book full of ephemeral and precious moments, where you watched the shooting stars above the trees and saw the fox flashing through the thicket and where you ripped your favorite silk dress in the thorns of the blackberry bushes and you didn’t care. 

You walk down San Xiao. You know that this means Saint Julian in Galego, but you also know that it must mean something in Chinese. You become curious, and you look it up, it means lots of things, but it means nothing to you and your green hills. 
On the way, you collect a bouquet of wild mint, forget me not, and other flowers whose names you don’t know. You plan to look their names up, you always plan it. But you never do it. One part of you wants to know everything, but there is another part of you that finds pleasure in being surrounded by nameless things. 

The forest ends for you where you encounter the first people, and you put your mask back on. A few corners later, there are drunkards, drunken men without masks, screaming across the street. It’s the first of May, and it’s Saturday, and the bars and cafes are crammed with people. It’s seven now, and people are having their party night early, while the sun is still high, because at nine, all bars have to close.  

You go home because that’s what you do when you are tired. You replace the withering bouquet on the wooden chest with today’s flowers. You realize that every day, your home becomes more forest, more meadow, more mountain.

The wreath of laurel and mimosa in your living room, the white flowers in your bathroom, the perfect little eucalyptus wreath above your bed, a gift from the friend who taught you how to wind wreaths. You look out of the window, where you see the grey walls of the inner courtyard. 

You want to go outside again – 

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Ser Silvestre is a miniature etching inspired by the forests of Galicia. it is part of the series The Far Province, inspired by Galician mythology. It is available in my shop.