Persian Girls: A Memoir (20 page)

 

 

 

 

 

Linda Chesterton had a large room to herself because her roommate had left to live at home and attend a local college. She was a thoughtful girl; she spent a lot of time alone, staying in the dormitory even on most Friday and Saturday nights. Tall, with large green eyes and chestnut brown hair that she wore pulled back, Linda was a sophomore who planned to major in art. She knocked on my door one Friday night when the dorm was practically empty and invited me to her room.

“I know you have sorrow in your heart,” she told me.

I was startled by her remark. Did it show on my face? The aftereffects of my losses seemed to have followed me like shadows. Then I began to pour out to her about my childhood, how Pari had lifted me out of utter loneliness and desolation when I was abducted by my father from Maryam, and how now I was so far away from them both.

“When I was twelve years old I injured my spine jumping off a tree in our backyard,” Linda said. “I was in bed for weeks. All I did was read and think about things.”

She made a deal with me to help me with my English and edit my papers, in return for Farsi lessons. Linda had read Omar Khayyám’s poetry and had become interested in ancient Iran and the Farsi language. She intended to use Farsi letters in her paintings. “I want to juxtapose something mystical with the ordinary,” she explained.

I took it that she was referring to me as well as the language when she used the word “mystical.” Coming from Linda, it was a compliment.

We began to spend a lot of time together. We were an odd couple on campus: she was tall and thin, I was short and suddenly a little overweight from the high-calorie food in the school’s dining room.

During the Christmas holidays Linda invited me to her home in Dallas.

“Don’t be put off by my parents,” she warned me before we left. “They’re very provincial.”

We reached her house at dinnertime, having taken an early bus from St. Louis. Linda’s mother, Shirley, kissed her.

“Welcome,” Shirley said to me but with a scrutinizing gaze that immediately made me uncomfortable. Linda showed me the guest room and then we went to dinner. The house was furnished with ornate, imitation European items, the way my parents’ house was. But the ranch-style architecture and the quietness surrounding it were vastly different.

Linda’s father was already sitting at the table. He nodded to me and said, “Sit down, Nadia.”

“Nahid,” Linda corrected.

“Nahad, how do you like our country so far? Isn’t it lucky you came here?”

I was blushing, uncomfortable with him.

“Let’s eat,” Shirley said. The table was already set with food similar to meals at school—corn bread, deep-fried chicken, and grits. Shirley bent her head and began to say grace, and we all bent our heads, too. In a moment she raised her head and said, “Amen,” and we all repeated, “Amen.” I had participated in the ritual on different occasions in the college.

Shirley began to pass around the food.

“What do you eat in Iran?” she asked me.

“The most common dishes are fish and lamb and chicken
kabab
s and stews.”

“Do you have houses in Iran?” was Shirley’s next question.

“Yes, definitely,” I said.

“You’re so much more refined than other foreigners,” she said.

Linda’s father was quiet throughout, listening to the hum of the TV turned low in the corner.

After dinner Linda and I withdrew to our rooms. Before going to bed I had to use the bathroom and I passed Linda’s room. Her mother was inside talking to her.

“Why don’t you ever do things like everyone else, the normal way? First you go out with an Egyptian and now your best friend is Eyeranian. Before we know it you’re going to announce you’re engaged to a Negro.”

“Mom, stop it,” Linda shouted. “I don’t want to hear any of this!”

I couldn’t hear them after I went into the bathroom. Later Linda joined me in my room and shut the door. I was sitting in bed, reading the
The Dallas Morning News,
which I had picked up in the living room.

I hid my head in the newspaper.

“My parents share the herd mentality of the people around here,” she said, assuming I had overheard the conversation. “Sometimes I lie in the dark and think about how disappointed they are in me. I don’t date much, I’m not in a hurry to catch the right husband. I’ll never be a typical housewife and mother. They sent me to Lindengrove to groom me for the right kind of husband. The college is just a finishing school.”

I thought of the home economics course that was immensely popular at school. The homecoming queen was a home economics major.

When we returned to St. James, Linda seemed more restless than ever and began cutting classes. One afternoon she came to my room and announced, “I’m not staying for the rest of the semester. I’m going to New York to enroll in art school. All I want to do is paint.”

“You’re quitting in the middle of the semester?”

“I can’t bear it here,” she said. “You could come to New York, too. Maybe we’ll room together.”

“I can’t quit,” I said. “I’m on a student visa. I have to be at school. And I wouldn’t be able to support myself anyway. I need the full scholarship.”

After Linda dropped out I tried to get away from the campus as much as possible. One day I looked for a bookstore in town but discovered there were none. A drugstore had a rack with some paperbacks and magazines on it. As I was browsing through the books with their shiny covers, my mind was totally on Jalal and his bookstore. I missed him, and my fears for him returned. Was he in jail, dead, alive? None of the books interested me and I bought a copy of
Time
magazine. I decided to treat myself to a meal out, something I rarely did for lack of money. I sat in a diner and read the magazine as I ate.

This was 1965 and there was a reference to Khomeini in a brief article. He had been released from house arrest and sent into exile in Turkey. He was sending messages to Iranians, demanding that they openly criticize the Shah. But, the article said, the upheaval that had beset Iranian cities had diminished over the last several weeks and there was no real threat to the Shah.

I noticed a young man sitting alone, staring at me.

“Hello,” he said, catching my eye. He had blue eyes and short-cropped blond hair, like most of the boys in the area. “Can I sit with you?” he asked.

“Yes, please,” I said.

He joined me. “I’m Bill Owen. And you?”

“Nahid Mehramy.”

He repeated my name a couple of times and asked, “Where are you from?”

“Iran.”

“A modern Shah and queen and all the oil,” he said. “Everyone must be rich there. Is your father rich?”

“Yes.”

“Did you live near oil fields?”

“Right in the middle of them.”

He said he sold electronic equipment and occasionally passed through St. James. After we finished eating he got the check and paid for my lunch, too. “I’ll take you for a ride,” he said. “That’s my car right there.”

I hesitated. Not that I was afraid of being seen with the man, as I had been when I went for the boat ride with James, but because I was afraid of who Bill Owen might be, where he would take me. In the dormitory students talked about rape and murder. But I was terribly lonely and wanted to make a connection. So I got into his car. He drove to a quiet spot just a few minutes out of the town. He put the car in park, then took my face in his hands and kissed me. I felt nothing. It was as if I were asleep or my flesh was numb. I was used to being wooed by a boy before anything could happen. Before I got onto the boat with James, I had seen him around town, our eyes had locked, we had smiled at each other. I had just met Bill. His hand touched my breast and I began to resist.

“Why not?” he whispered, breathing fast.

I didn’t know what to say to this stranger, so I said nothing.

Bill put his head on the steering wheel and gave an exasperated sigh. Then he began to drive me to the college.

“Let me know if you’re in town again,” I said, as he dropped me off.

“I will,” he said and quickly drove away.

I stood by the school’s gate as if I had been thrown out of his car. I thought of how persistent the boys in Ahvaz were—day after day standing on the sidewalk waiting for us girls to pass by. This encounter seemed to be part of an American code I didn’t quite comprehend.

But for weeks, I missed this man I had met only once.

 

 

 

 

 

It was helpful to see how my brothers had adjusted to the culture. Cyrus, who lived in Ohio now, was visiting Parviz in his apartment in St. Louis. Both my brothers had assumed the more informal American appearance and manner. They were immersed in the culture and even had American girlfriends, who joined us for dinner. Cyrus’s girlfriend, Mildred, grew up on a farm in Ohio and was blond and Christian. Parviz’s girlfriend, Shirley, was from Tennessee and also Christian, and had light brown hair and brown eyes. In certain ways my brothers had fulfilled our parents’ expectations. Parviz was doing well in his field of medicine, having gotten an internship at a prestigious hospital, and Cyrus was getting a Ph.D. in mathematics, after completing his engineering degree. Neither had returned home for visits, even though they could now afford it. They both explained that it was difficult for them psychologically. It had taken a long time to understand the cues of this new culture and to finally become a part of it. It would be jarring to go back and forth.

T
hroughout the year, I had written Pari several letters. I never received a reply. But finally one came in my second semester.

 

 

I remained in my chair, almost paralyzed with sadness. Finally I put the letter in a cardboard box where I kept an antique tortoiseshell comb and brush set that Pari had given to me when we were in Ahvaz. The lid was decorated with designs of a willowy girl sitting by a stream. I had written “Pari” on it.

A few months later, another letter arrived.

 

 

At the bottom of the letter Pari had copied a poem, “The Wind-up Doll,” by the famous Iranian poet Furugh Farrukhzad. Farrukhzad, who lived in Ahvaz for a period of time, was both admired and attacked by people for her outspokenness on issues having to do with women’s private desires, so suppressed in Iran.