Persian Girls: A Memoir (22 page)

Then a thought came to her—if she found the evidence that Taheri had been in jail and for what crime, maybe the information would enable her to get a divorce without losing custody of her son and the right to her
mehrieh.
If there were any documents in the house, pointing to Taheri’s guilt, they would be in the black filing cabinet in the basement that was always locked. Not long before, she had gone into the cluttered basement and sorted out all the unnecessary stuff stored in boxes—old clothes, chipped dishes and utensils, broken chandeliers, dented samovars. She had hired someone to come and take them away. Another day she had looked through the folders stored in the cabinets set against the wall. They contained documents that had to do with old family affairs and she left them alone. One of the cabinets was locked. She had asked Taheri what was in it. He said it contained documents having to do with important business matters and she should leave them alone.

As soon as she got home she went directly to the basement and tried to open the lock with a knife and scissors, but neither worked. She thought of getting a locksmith to open it but was afraid he might talk. She left the basement and called Shirin, who would get her cousin to open the lock.

In the morning Shirin and her cousin Ebrahim came over and Pari led them to the locked cabinet. After Ebrahim opened the lock they found only two folders inside. Sitting on an old sofa Pari hadn’t discarded, they went through every piece of paper in the folders. And there it was—a yellowish document drawn up by a lawyer, asking a judge to reduce the jail sentence. Pari kept the document and put the folders back in the cabinet. Then Ebrahim fixed the lock. Taheri would never know.

Taheri’s parents and sisters treat him like God,
Pari wrote.
But he’s inexplicably depressed, deeply so. It could be because he hates the weakness, the need-fulness in himself. And he might have deep guilt locked inside him. The depression turns outward at times, making him violent. He goes from a gentle, weeping man to a terrifying one and then back again.

Pari had decided that she would go home and show Father the document. Taheri planned to go on a business trip in two weeks and that would be a good time for her to leave. With what she had discovered about Taheri, surely Father would understand why she wanted to leave him. And perhaps this time Mohtaram would be on her side.

That evening at dinner, Pari noticed Taheri was tense and uneasy, as if he somehow sensed what she had found out about him. Was she giving out subtle cues? It was true that when looking at him, she kept thinking,
he killed an innocent woman.

Pari slept in the guest room that night, telling Taheri that she had a terrible headache and wanted to be alone in bed. Now Pari was waiting only for Taheri to go on the trip and then she would take Bijan and go home. Her biggest fear was that if indeed Taheri was vaguely aware that she knew something, he would cancel his trip and stay home to keep an eye on her.

In the letter she included another poem by Furugh Farrukhzad.

 

 

Outside my dorm room, I heard the footsteps of the other girls, whispers, giggles. I sat in my room, all alone except for Pari’s letter.

Pari’s next letter came from Ahvaz. Before taking Bijan and starting on her journey, she had removed her wedding ring and put it on the dining table. She left no note. When she arrived home Father and Mohtaram took turns holding Bijan, cooing to him, kissing him, murmuring, “My only grandchild,” or, “My beautiful little boy.”

Then, Pari showed the document to Father.

“The woman would have lived if Taheri hadn’t driven away from her,” she said to him. “Wouldn’t the court grant me the divorce and let me keep Bijan, and my
mehrieh,
too, if you show them this document?”

Father read the document carefully and said, “This doesn’t say anything about his running away from the scene, and he was let out of jail after a short time. Pari, you have this wonderful son now, you shouldn’t be contemplating leaving your husband.”

“My friend’s cousin was on the scene and saw everything. Maybe he knows others who were there, too.”

“I’ve been in law for years,” Father said. “Witnesses aren’t given much weight, particularly years after the incident.”

“Father, please, please try. I can’t bear living with this man. I’m afraid of him.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, turning to leave.

In the morning, Father looked at Pari. His face was clouded by concern.

“Imagine how we will all be stigmatized if you get a divorce.”

“Aren’t I entitled to some individual happiness?” Pari said.

“Pari, you’re under the influence of those American movies. Their idea of individual happiness is selfish and it has hurt their sense of family life. That’s why so many Americans are miserable, lonely, killing themselves with drugs and alcohol. What we have is superior; each person should think of the happiness of the whole.”

“Look at this wonderful child,” Mohtaram said, holding Bijan in her lap. “You may never see him again if you get a divorce. The court will let Taheri keep him because he’s two years old and doesn’t need your milk. That’s the law. The most you’ll get is visitation rights. Taheri lives far away from here, and anyway, he’ll make sure to keep Bijan from you.” They fell silent.

“You want to be in the same situation as those poor, lonely women who aren’t able to find husbands?” Mohtaram asked after a moment.

“But I’ve been married already.”

“You’ll be unmarried again if you pursue this kind of attitude.”

Taheri’s sisters informed him that Pari had taken Bijan and most likely gone home, so he cut his trip short and came directly to Ahvaz. When Taheri arrived, Pari was in the courtyard with Bijan. He picked up Bijan. “Pack and let’s get going, or else I’m taking my son without you.”

Father walked into the courtyard from the street and tried to pry Bijan out of Taheri’s arms.

“He’s my son and he’s going with me,” Taheri shouted. “You’ve spoiled your daughter! She isn’t suitable to be a wife or a mother. You need to work on her.” Taheri walked out of the courtyard with a crying Bijan in his arms.

Father didn’t run after him, he didn’t see the point. He told Pari she should go back to her husband and child. Pari stayed, even though our parents weren’t welcoming and she missed Bijan terribly. Both Father and Mohtaram criticized her for leaving her husband in the first place. Father would concede only that Taheri was “below our family in intellect and culture.”

Majid was married and living in Isfahan, where he was teaching and working as an assistant director in a film studio. His mother had selected his bride, Pari had heard from her friend Golnaz. Golnaz also told her that Majid found his wife to be “too common,” not someone he could talk to or share ideas with. Majid’s expectation for a wife was different from most men’s, Golnaz said. Pari hoped that Majid would hear about her being in Ahvaz and come to look for her, put a letter in her hand, send her flowers as he used to. She still had the dried flower petals in her bureau drawers. But in her darker moods she tortured herself with images of Majid and his wife sharing the same space, exchanging intimate words, touches.

She could not stop thinking of those stolen meetings she had with Majid—their breathing stilled and then revived by the tempo of desire. She had hoped to induce those kinds of feelings in her marriage but of course it didn’t work.

Manijeh came home frequently, without her husband, and stayed for a few days at a time. Manijeh hadn’t been on my mind for a long time and just seeing her name in Pari’s letter brought back all the unresolved tension between us. There was a change in her, Pari said. Perhaps Pari herself had changed, too, and could see Manijeh in a more sympathetic light. Now Manijeh confided in Pari, telling her that she was convinced her husband was in love with someone else. She longed for closeness with him, wanted to have children, but Javad wasn’t open to her. Most evenings he came home late and left early in the morning. When she questioned him he claimed he was swamped with work at the refinery hospital. On the few occasions when they went out with other couples, Manijeh noticed continuous glances between Javad and Shahla, a nurse at the same hospital. Manijeh had seen them holding hands surreptitiously under the table. Javad, who spoke disdainfully about most women, was always complimentary of Shahla. Strange, Manijeh thought, since other people criticized Shahla, saying that she had bad manners, that her family wasn’t reputable, that her father had once been arrested for smuggling drugs into the country from Dubai. Manijeh had come to believe that Javad really wanted to marry Shahla but married her instead for the sake of appearances and because of pressure from his mother. He never told Manijeh that he loved her.

Mohtaram couldn’t believe that Javad, or any man, would ignore Manijeh, her angel. She thought perhaps it was Manijeh who was keeping herself aloof from him. She advised, “Show him how much you care for him.” “Wait and see, he’ll be dazzled by you once he starts really looking at you.”

Mohtaram said Javad’s mother was self-satisfied and arrogant, or she would try to discuss the matter with her. When Mrs. Golestani had come to ask for Manijeh’s hand for her son, she had spoken very little, as if she didn’t want to waste any words with her, Mohtaram said.

To Pari’s astonishment Manijeh blamed Mohtaram for not preparing her for real life, for keeping her in a padded, soft, cocoon-like space. Manijeh, whose slightest headache prompted Mohtaram to take her to a doctor, whose mere frown filled Mohtaram with self-recrimination, now expected Mohtaram to fix her life for her. Still, Manijeh didn’t intend to ask for a divorce. She hoped that Javad would turn around and begin to love her. Moreover she liked the idea of being married. She wanted Ali and others who came to visit to address her as Mrs. Golestani. She held her hand so that her wedding and engagement rings caught the light.

“The problem lies in you girls,” Father told Pari and Manijeh. “Expecting too much and being too spoiled.”

Mohtaram and Father were also concerned about Farzin’s future. Who would marry her, when she reached that age? Mohtaram consoled herself saying, “She has a delightful disposition and those beautiful gray eyes.” She added, with rare humor, “After all, intellect in a woman isn’t the first priority with men.”

One day Pari saw Father standing on the balcony, crying.

F
ather said he’d send you a plane ticket when you graduate,” Parviz informed me in a letter.

My senior year, 1968-1969, Iran continued in turmoil, with tension and threat in the air, as in my high school years. Since the late 1960s, increases in the price of oil had brought billions of dollars into the Iranian economy. But most of that money, people believed, was going straight into the pockets of the Shah and his close circle, or spent on the military. From his exile in Iraq, having left Turkey, Khomeini was sending messages to Iranians, advocating a democratic Islamic regime in place of corrupt rule by the Shah and his alliance with the United States. He provoked people to go to the streets to show their sympathy with him; that led to widespread arrests of demonstrators.

Added to the political situation in Iran was my painful family situation. In spite of ups and downs in America, I wanted to stay on. But unless I could continue as a student, my visa would expire six months after graduation. In my sophomore and junior years my grades had improved considerably along with my English, but I had to solve the problem of how I would support myself while in graduate school. There was no point in asking Father for help.

I contacted Linda, my friend who had moved to New York City. She told me about the New School, a university there that allowed students to attend part-time and work part-time. No formal application was necessary. She was moving out of New York in a few weeks—she and her painter boy-friend were going to Taos so they could save money and devote themselves to painting. If I went to New York without telling Father or anyone else, I thought, he would have a hard time tracking me down; he wasn’t going to drop everything in his complicated life and come look for me.

On graduation day linden trees were in bloom on campus. Wearing a cap and gown and standing with other girls on the campus lawn, I was the only one without any family members attending the ceremony.

After the ceremony, while the air was still filled with congratulatory remarks and cheers, I wandered back to my room to pack. I planned to take a bus to New York the following day. I wrote a letter to Father that night, telling him that I had decided to go to graduate school and work part-time, that I wouldn’t be returning home. I gave no information about my intention to go to New York. Putting that letter in the mailbox was more painful, even frightening, than I had anticipated. It was as if I had been dangling from a rope Father held and had just been cut loose.

 

 

 

 

 

The Greyhound bus pulled into New York’s Port Authority terminal at six in the morning. Groggy and disoriented, I sat in a restaurant in the Port Authority to have breakfast, trying to think, to pull my mind together. I had made no advance plans about where to stay, and I didn’t have a job.

“Do you know of any safe, inexpensive hotels in New York?” I asked a woman sitting at the table next to mine.

“There’s nothing inexpensive in this city,” she said, looking up from her newspaper.

I had one suitcase and $755 to my name. Outside the bus terminal, so many people were roaming the streets, so many cars, that my knees became weak.

I began to walk slowly toward lower street numbers, stopping every few blocks to put down the heavy suitcase and rest. I wandered into the lobby of a modern hotel.