Persian Girls: A Memoir

“I have a favor to ask,” he said. “It’s confidential. Can you do that for your sister?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want you to give her a letter from me. I knew you come to this park every year, so I brought it with me.” He took out a folded envelope from his shirt pocket and gave it to me.

  Suddenly I saw Father walking toward us with another man. Luckily he was so engrossed in conversation that he didn’t notice me. I quickly slipped the envelope into my pocketbook, said good-bye to Majid, and hurried away.

  Later that day, as soon as I was in my room, I read the letter. I knew Pari wouldn’t mind my reading it. It was very brief but in it Majid declared his everlasting love for Pari, and urged her to leave her husband. Again he declared what had sounded like a fantasy, “We’ll elope.”

  I tore up the letter and put the pieces inside my notebook to discard as soon as I went outside. I would have to tell Pari about the letter when I saw her. It was too dangerous to keep in the house.

  Mahvash came to Nezam Vafa High School in the middle of the semester. Her father had been transferred to Ahvaz from Tehran, where he worked for the city. At recess I noticed her sitting on a bench under a canopy reading a monthly magazine Setareh that had one fiction piece per issue.

  “I subscribe to Setareh,” I said, sitting next to her.

  “Did you read that they aren’t going to run the rest of the novel by Ardavani?”

  “Yes, I’m so disappointed.”

  Mahmood Ardavani was a slick, popular writer but I liked the segments of his novel I had read in Setareh, mainly because they were set in America, my obsession. In the story an Iranian man studying in America falls in love with an American girl. It is a dilemma for him since his parents want him to marry an Iranian girl. We wouldn’t find out now what happens at the end.

  “The note said the author requested that they stop running it for his own personal reasons. I wonder what they are,” Mahvash said.

  “Maybe the novel is autobiographical.”

  After that we sometimes walked to the Karoon River together and watched the activities on the other side—American girls riding bicycles, considered improper for Iranian girls, boys and girls walking together, holding hands.

  She had a brother who was two years older than us. Father didn’t like the idea of my visiting her because he thought people would start gossiping that I might be seeing her brother. So instead she visited me sometimes. We sat in my room and talked about our dreams the way I used to with Pari.

  “I want to become a writer,” I said.

  “That’s a hard battle. You know you’ll be so restricted in what you can write about, particularly since you’re a girl.”

  “I’ll go to America, if I can get my father to send me.”

  “I’d like to get out of Iran, too, become a ballet dancer.”

  I took on a school-sponsored job, teaching illiterate adults twice a week. The students came from the poor, underprivileged segment of Ahvaz’s population and I enjoyed their eagerness to learn. I also liked the independence of making money on my own. I was able to afford more things. I bought more books. I dropped into Tabatabai Bookstore weekly, sometimes more frequently, and asked for recommendations from Jalal, always making sure no one else was in the store.

  “You know so much about books,” I said to him once.

  “I was going to Tehran University, studying literature,” he said. His face became tinged with pain. “Then my father was arrested for distributing pamphlets. He died in jail, who knows of what. I stopped going to school. I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear being in Tehran, either. I came here, and brought my mother. She has a sister in Ahvaz. I opened this bookstore. I like it even better than going to college. I read what I choose to read.”

  I asked Jalal to recommend a book for me to read to Ali. Ali was illiterate. The novel Jalal recommended was by an unknown Iranian writer. It described the adventures of an Iranian man traveling in the jungles of Africa and South America. The man encountered dangerous animals; he managed to calm them down and get away from them without ever harming them. Ali came to my room one or two evenings a week—he squatted on the floor and I sat at the edge of my bed—and I read to him. Ali was visibly excited at some scenes, getting up and sitting down again, waving his hands in the air.

  Finally a letter came from Pari.

  . . . I’m sorry I haven’t been writing but my life has been full of turmoil, hard to be coherent about it. To sum up some aspects of it, I was wrong to believe Taheri wouldn’t stop me from acting. In fact he’s keeping me a virtual prisoner since he found out about the bit part in a play I managed to get. It was put on in Do Rang Theater, produced by a group of graduates of American universities. They show plays translated from other languages. It’s a very small theater and they sell tickets by subscription only. I told Taheri about wanting to take on a part but he more or less ignored the issue. Then he became enraged when one of his coworkers saw me in it. He forced me to stop immediately. He said I had shamed him by going into a “disreputable” place. Actresses are immoral, he said, and these places are no more than brothels. His idea of disreputable is anything that has to do with entertainment, similar to Father’s and so many other people’s attitudes. I reminded him of his promising me I would be free to do what I wanted. He said he hadn’t thought it through then and now he saw that people were talking behind our backs. When he’s at work his sister comes to the house and watches over me like a prison guard. Don’t refer to any of this when you write to me since she or Taheri might get to the mail before me. Did Mother or Father tell you that I called and complained? I was hoping after hearing me they would encourage me to come home, but Father said I just got married and I must give it a chance. Mohtaram got on the phone and said the same thing.

  I wanted to burst out and say something to Father and Mohtaram but she was pregnant. Both she and Father were totally absorbed in that. She became big and heavy and sluggish.

  “At my age, having a baby again! I’m not young, I’m thirty-nine years old,” she complained. “I’ve been giving birth since I was fourteen.” She waddled around in loose print dresses, sweaty, irritable, miserable, her voice shrill. “I’m getting so big, you’d think I was pregnant with two.”

  I couldn’t understand why she would let herself get pregnant again. But then I remembered how Father always said, “Birth control is preventing life.” He didn’t believe in abortion, either, which was illegal anyway. “It’s killing, no difference.”

  Mohtaram went into labor late one afternoon. Father brought in an obstetrician—by then using midwives was no longer a common practice. After a few hours the obstetrician, a heavyset, somber-looking man, came out of the bedroom and spoke to Father, who was sitting on a chair on the porch, keeping vigil. “We ought to get her to a hospital quickly. She may need surgery.”

  They took Mohtaram to the hospital in town. When Father returned he told us that indeed Mohtaram had twins, two girls. Three days later Father brought Mohtaram and the twins home. Each baby was wrapped in a thin pink blanket. Father called Manijeh and me in to look at the babies. They had named them Farzaneh and Farzin. They weren’t identical and in fact looked very different. Farzin was smaller, her face thinner, and she had lighter eyes, a grayish color, whereas Farzaneh’s were dark brown. Mohtaram opened her blouse and put Farzin at one of her breasts and the baby began to suck.

  “Two more girls to worry about,” Father mumbled, shaking his head.

  Mohtaram’s friends came to the house to see the babies and bring gifts. I thought how sad it was that Mohtaram had so many children and Maryam didn’t even have one. I was hoping Maryam would come to visit, but she was still in Karbala.

  Once when Manijeh came out of Mohtaram’s room, Ali was sitting on the porch. He turned to Manijeh and said, “Your mother now has two babies to look after.”

  That threw Manijeh into a fit. “All you do is stare at pigeons. And you’re squinting. Are you blind? Be useful and get me some lemonade.
”

  In fact Ali didn’t see well. He had trachoma in one of his eyes and it couldn’t be operated on. Sitting there, a small man with graying hair and a squint, he seemed vulnerable. Manijeh’s attack made me angry.

  “Leave him alone,” I said. She and I barely interacted except in anger, even now that Pari was no longer at home. We lived in the same house like strangers.

  “Didn’t you hear me?” Manijeh said to Ali, ignoring me. Then she pressed her tongue between her teeth, her face becoming deep red.

  Ali didn’t move.

  “You’ll pay for this,” Manijeh said before storming off.

  Farzin was behind Farzaneh in her development. She didn’t crawl yet, didn’t smile or look at people the way Farzaneh did.

  “I spoke to the obstetrician,” Father told Mohtaram at breakfast one morning, just after I left the room. “He said most likely she didn’t get enough oxygen at birth.” He sounded depressed.

  “Terrible, terrible, how could that happen?” Mohtaram’s voice was urgent.

  “They weren’t prepared for twins. The poor child is going to have even more problems than most girls.”

  My heart began to ache for her. I had gotten attached to her and Farzaneh and played with them joyfully during my breaks from studying or reading or writing.

  Mohtaram didn’t have enough milk in her breasts to feed two babies, so they hired a wet nurse, Zeinab. She had an oblong, ruddy face and wore her hair in two thick braids. She was a small woman but her breasts were large and filled with milk. She came over every day, leaving her three children with her own mother. One day she brought them with her and they ran around or hovered over the twins, watching their mother nurse them. The youngest, a two-year-old girl, demanded to be fed, too, even though she had been weaned. Zeinab let her suck at her breasts and kissed her, saying, “My little sweet baby.” After sucking for a while the little girl broke loose and joined her brothers. They playfully pulled one another’s hair, embraced, kissed. Their faces were smeared with watermelon or cherry juice. When exhausted, the children lay next to one another on the ground and went to sleep. I envied the harmony between them.

  Zeinab said about her own daughter, “Poor little girl, her father and brothers are nice to her now but as soon as she’s older and shows any independence they’re going to bully her. Men!”

  “Men!” Mohtaram echoed. “When I got pregnant this time I squeezed my thighs, hoping the babies wouldn’t come into this world. Didn’t I have enough children already?”

  “God who gives them to us will look after them,” Zeinab said.

  They each picked up a twin and hugged and kissed them.

  Sometimes I sat with Zeinab and listened to her stories about people in her village. We would put the twins in a hammock hung from two palm trees in the courtyard and rock it as we talked.

  “Poor child, you’re treated badly by your mother,” she said. “Mothers should be nice to their daughters. Girls have enough trouble.” How could she help noticing that Mohtaram came to Manijeh’s side every time she and I got into a fight? Zeinab gave me presents—a handkerchief she had embroidered, a potpourri with flowers she had dried in sunlight.

  Once I overheard Zeinab and Mohtaram in the courtyard, pushing the babies in their carriage toward the outside door. Mohtaram complained to Zeinab about the responsibilities she had had all her life having given birth to so many children. It was the usual complaint. But this time she added, “Nahid treats me like an enemy.”

  I was shaken. Was it possible that I had started the pattern of coldness between us? Was it me who had rebuffed her that first day, years ago, when Father brought me home? I recalled an incident soon after one of Maryam’s visits. I was sitting with Mohtaram at breakfast, eating silently, not looking at her, not saying a word. Suddenly she said, “Aren’t I your mother, even a little?” I was so startled by her question that I remained silent. Then I got up and left. I felt, deep in my heart, that I would be betraying Maryam if I opened up to Mohtaram, even though Maryam never tried to turn me against her sister.

  Fourteen

  Come out, don’t make me break the door!” I could hear Father’s voice from the courtyard.

  I hurried up the stairs to where Father was standing in front of Pari’s old room.

  “This is crazy,” he shouted. “You leave your handsome, wealthy husband and come back home. What’s the matter with you?” He walked away, shaking his head angrily.

  “Pari, please let me in,” I pleaded, my hand on the doorknob. She opened the door just enough so I could slide in. She threw herself on the bed and buried her face in her pillow. I cried out when I saw bloodstains on the pillow and sheets.

  “What happened? You’re bleeding,” I gasped, putting my hand on her arm.

  “I’ve been having nosebleeds.”

  Pari had neglected to latch the door and Mohtaram came in, carrying a washcloth and a glass of orange juice. She sat at the edge of the bed and wiped Pari’s nose with the cloth.

  “My dear daughter, didn’t I tell you no marriage is good at the beginning?” she said. “You’ve been with him for only a little more than a year and you’re already home complaining.” She lifted Pari’s head and put the glass of orange juice to her lips.

  Farzin and Farzaneh began to cry loudly in the nursery, and Mohtaram left to attend to them.

  “I told Father I wasn’t going back. He started shouting at me, so I locked myself in here,” Pari said.

  The flower scents had faded from Pari’s room but I could still feel Majid’s presence there now that Pari had returned. “Pari,” I whispered. “Majid gave me a letter for you, but I tore it up. I was afraid Father would find it.” I told her about the encounter in the park and what he had said in the letter.

  “I want a divorce,” Pari said, flushing. “I can’t bear living with Taheri another day.”

  It was pleasantly cool for October in Ahvaz, which usually had only two seasons, summer and winter. Throngs of people were out shopping, strolling, or sitting in cafés.

  “Maybe if I had been allowed to marry Majid, I would’ve soon found faults with him,” Pari said as we reached the river and started walking on the bridge. “But because he was forbidden to me I idealize him. Every morning I wake, my heart is filled with desire for him, and I am sad to find Taheri beside me in bed. But you know, Nahid, even if Majid didn’t exist I would never warm up to Taheri. He’s a liar. He went against all his promises to me. He goes out and gets drunk after he pretended to Father that he didn’t drink. The slightest thing makes him angry and he throws tantrums.” She said nothing for a few minutes. “I have to find a way to get out of the marriage.”

  “Pari, all I wish for myself now is to go to America to study. If you got a divorce you could aim for the same thing. We have to try to bend Father’s will.”

  The bridge was becoming crowded with young people. Boys and girls strolled separately. The boys watched the girls and sighed loudly. Some leaned over the railing and stared at the water flowing below.

  Suddenly I noticed Majid, alone, bent over the railing. Pari noticed him, too, and immediately flushed. He gave a start at seeing Pari and his face also became red. We stood next to him, long enough for him to whisper something to Pari.

  Pari shook her head at something he said and we started walking back.

  “He wants to meet me,” she said finally. “I don’t know if I can get away with it.”

  The streetlights flickered on one by one and we walked faster.

  “Pari, you’re a married woman and have come home without your husband,” Father said when we got home. He was sitting on the porch, listening to the radio turned on high in the salon. “You shouldn’t be walking on the streets. I don’t want any cause for gossip. I want you to return to your husband as soon as possible.”

  Pari avoided Father’s eyes and we headed to her room.

  “Taheri keeps saying if I give him a son everything will be good between us,” Pari said. “It’s as if I have
the power to produce a boy. Anyway, I don’t want children, I don’t want to become a baby machine like Mother. And I don’t want a child from him.”

  I looked at the posters of actresses on the walls. She had left her room intact.

  “It’s terrible that he stops you from acting,” I said.

  Pari nodded. “I thought my home life was terrible with Father always telling us what to do and Mohtaram paying so much attention to Manijeh. But it is heaven compared to my life with Taheri. Father is never deliberately cruel. Taheri is a sadist. He put a lit cigarette on my arm.”

  She pulled up the sleeve of her blouse and showed me her arm. Little scars lined her arm. My heart sank at the sight. “Did you show it to Father?” I asked.

  “I tried, but he ignored it. Taheri tortures me mentally, too, Nahid. He wants me to cook and iron his clothes in certain ways. Make his food the way his sister does. The slightest deviation throws him into a fit. His sister is there almost every day, and she criticizes me, too, for not knowing anything about domestic tasks.”

  In our household domestic tasks were taken care of by Ali and Fatemeh, with Mohtaram only supervising them. Our parents believed that their daughters didn’t need to actually know how to perform household tasks as they expected we would marry men who could afford servants.

  “What’s the good of Taheri’s wealth? We don’t live in a good neighborhood. It’s in a dreary section of the city and the house is drab and dark. Except for his sister, we don’t have help. Taheri likes to keep his money invested, and of course none of the money is in my name. And the mehrieh is good only if he is the one who divorces me. We never entertain friends, only Taheri’s huge number of relatives. They’re dull, with no aspirations. They see me as someone from another planet—in their eyes I’m flighty, impractical.”

  “Pari, how did you manage to come here without him?”

  “I didn’t tell him I was coming. He’s away in Karaj; he has a shop there, too. I just left him a note. He gives me a weekly allowance for ‘incidental expenses, ’ and I saved it and that’s how I was able to buy a plane ticket. I wish I could work, have some independence, but he’s absolutely against it. He says if I work it’d be a bad comment on him, as a man and a breadwinner. And he doesn’t like me to be exposed to people he doesn’t know, that’s how controlling he is. Nahid, I can’t talk to him about anything. He isn’t interested in movies or plays or books. I hate my life. Endless, mundane chores every day, the same dull rhythm.”