Persian Girls: A Memoir (14 page)

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.

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.”

 

 

 

 

 

Hours later I woke to sounds I thought were cicadas carrying on, but it was Pari weeping. I had fallen asleep on her floor. In the rays of moonlight streaming through the blinds I could see she was still asleep. I gently woke her. “Pari, are you having a nightmare?”

She slowly opened her eyes and sat up. “I dreamt I was pregnant but something was seriously wrong. In desperation I threw myself down a steep stairway.”

I caressed her back. As if not quite awake yet, she lay down and closed her eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

“Your husband is coming to take you back,” Father said to Pari the next morning at breakfast. “That only shows how much he cares about you. We had a talk on the phone.”

“I’m not going back to him. I hate him,” Pari said. “I want a divorce.”

“You must give him a chance,” he said coldly.

“I’ve given it enough time.”

“Do you want to lose your
mehrieh,
millions of
tooman
s we worked hard to negotiate? You know you won’t get one
rial
of it if you’re the one divorcing him. Besides, what are people going to say about us if you come back home? Do you want to disgrace us? Why do you hate a man who cares about you so much?”

“I don’t want that money. I’m a slave to him because of it. He knows that I’d lose it and he keeps me a prisoner. He’s crazy.” Pari hid her head in her hands and started to cry.

“Father, Pari is miserable with him,” I said.

“Pari doesn’t need you to stand up for her.” He turned his gaze toward me. His face was contorted. He turned back to Pari. “He’s coming to Ahvaz, maybe tonight. Be ready to go back with him.”

 

 

 

 

 

A loud knock on the outside door woke me out of a restless sleep. I tiptoed onto the porch.

“
Agha,
they’re already in bed,” Ali was saying to Taheri in the courtyard.

“I’m so sorry, Taheri, I admit my daughter is spoiled,” said Father as he approached his son-in-law. “Bear with her. She’ll grow up.”

Father led him to the guest room, Cyrus’s old room.

The next morning he called Pari into the salon, where Taheri was waiting. I watched as Pari walked into the room and closed the door behind her.

“Taheri knelt by me and apologized and begged me to go back,” Pari told me later. “He made all sorts of promises. I’ll give him one more chance.”

By the end of the day she was gone again.

I
found a letter from Parviz on the kitchen table.

 

 

The idea of Father sending me, a daughter, to America was ridiculous. I knew that. But Parviz’s letter inflamed me.

I began to study even harder, aiming to come first in my class, hoping that my academic success would make Father sympathetic to my cause. It wouldn’t be hard to come first, as few girls took their studies seriously.

At the end of that school year I saw posted on the bulletin board in front of the principal’s office that I was first in my class. At home I found Father, Mohtaram, and Manijeh in the salon. Mohtaram was embroidering another tapestry and Manijeh was sitting on a chair next to her, talking to her. Father sat in another corner, listening to the large radio, taking a break from his work.

“I’m first in my class,” I announced.

“Very good. But I wish you didn’t lock yourself up in your room and work and work,” Father said. He turned to the radio to catch the end of the news, something about oil revenues rising in Iran.

Mohtaram and Manijeh ignored what I said. I tried to say to myself that they hadn’t heard me but I didn’t believe it. I left the room, went to my own, and cried.

I began writing letters to Parviz, asking for help.

 

 

 

 

“You’re doing so well at school. I don’t understand why Manijeh does so poorly,” Mrs. Soleimani said when classes started in the new year.

“She isn’t interested in studying.” It was true. Manijeh, now seventeen, was focused on marriage. Mohtaram was already adding more and more items to her dowry, which she had begun to prepare as soon as Pari got married. She and Father hadn’t committed yet to any of the suitors who had started asking for Manijeh’s hand, but they expected that soon the right man would come along.

“A new radio station has just come on the air,” Mrs. Soleimani said. “They’re interested in stories by students. Why don’t you give me the one about the mother and the blind child. I’ll send it in.”

Days later, the radio station accepted my story.

I wished I could share my good news with Maryam but she had been out of reach ever since she went to Karbala.