Persian Girls: A Memoir (5 page)

“There’s so much to do today, shopping, cooking,” Mohtaram suddenly began to complain to no one in particular. “We need to get a new oven, a new fan for the salon. And all the children want one thing or another,” she said. “Nahid needs a uniform to wear to school,” she added.

There was no warmth in her words. I felt it was only me she was complaining about, as if I had somehow tipped the scales and now she had far too many children to attend to. The others, after all, had always been there.

Father got up and pulled the shades over the windows to cut the merciless light. When he sat down again he looked very serious, as if about to give a lecture. A hush fell over the table. After a few moments of tense silence, he said, “I have to take Nahid to school her first day.”

Everyone finished eating and left the dining room one by one. The early morning havoc followed—the children flitting around the large house, looking for something or other—a misplaced shoe, the collar of a school uniform. I went into my room and waited quietly.

Finally Mohtaram came in and handed me a gray uniform with a white collar.

“Here,” she said. “Wear this until we get you your own. It’s Manijeh’s from last year.”

“I don’t want to wear it,” I said, rebellion bubbling up inside me. We didn’t wear uniforms in my school in Tehran. Mohtaram walked away without another word.

After a few moments, Father appeared in the doorway. “Hurry up and put on the uniform, we have to go,” he said.

Reluctantly, I put it on. It was too big for me.

“We’ll get you your own uniform soon,” he said once we were outside. “You’re nine years old now, a woman,” he added as we began walking. “You need my supervision.”

I said nothing, filled with anxiety and fear of his power over me.

“I want you to start calling your mother ‘Mother,’ ” he said. “She is your real mother, she always has been.”

“I don’t want to stay here,” I said.

“You must stop talking like that,” he said firmly.

We turned from Pahlavi Avenue onto another, smaller street lined mainly with houses, most of them modern, not inside courtyards. Palm trees, some with dates clustered between their branches, stood everywhere. There were no
joob
s in sight. It was much warmer than yesterday in Tehran and I was hot from walking. I felt I had been plunged into a different, alien world.

The school, a modern building on a long street, finally came into view. “Your sisters went here, too,” Father said. “It goes through the sixth grade.”

Other girls in gray uniforms swarmed in the street, some walking, some dropped off by chauffeurs. They greeted one another and disappeared inside.

As we reached the entrance Father said, “I’m sure you’ll like it. You’re only a week late for classes here.”

I stood by the door, not wanting to go in. He took my hand and led me inside into a large yard. The yard was open on the other side, except for a short fence. Palm trees stood in clumps in several spots. The classrooms and offices were inside a large grayish two-story modern structure. Father led me to the principal’s office on the second floor.

A woman in a stiff navy blue suit opened the door. Her dark hair was pulled back tightly and she wore a touch of makeup on her face.

“Oh, Mr. Ghazi,” she said, using the word for “judge.” “I am so pleased you believe this school worthy of your daughter.” She turned to me. “Welcome. You look healthy. It was good of your parents to send you to Tehran to recover.”

I blushed. What was she talking about?

“We’ll be off now. I wanted you to meet her,” Father said to the woman.

“We’ll take good care of her,” she replied, smiling at me.

“Go and join the other girls,” Father said to me as we walked back to the yard. “Find out where your classroom is.” He walked away, leaving me alone in the courtyard.

Girls in uniforms stood in groups in patches of shade or under canopies. I felt self-conscious in the too-big uniform. All the girls seemed to know one another well and I felt too upset and shy to even try to strike up a conversation with any of them.

Back in Tehrani School my friends now were talking to one another, comparing notes about other girls they liked or didn’t like, teachers who were nice or not nice. Maybe they were worried about me, wondering what had happened to me, or why I was abducted by that man. Or maybe by now they knew what happened. Father had spoken to the principal there and she might have announced it to the students.

Most likely Batul must have gone to our house and found out from Maryam what happened. I missed my friends and Maryam. Was Maryam on the way to get me? Would she be waiting for me when I returned to the house? It was hard to believe that just twenty-four hours earlier I had been in Tehran with them.

A man walked over to the large bell hanging from the ceiling of the school porch and banged it with a brass pole. The girls began to line up for classes. I asked a girl where the fourth grade was. She scrutinized me and then pointed to a line. I went and stood at the end of it.

The bell rang again and everyone began to sing the national anthem, routine at all schools, but I joined in with difficulty in this new place.

 

 

After we finished singing we went into our classrooms and I sat close to a window, so I could look outside.

The teacher, a middle-aged man, walked in. He began to write words on the blackboard and asked us for the meaning of each one. He didn’t seem to notice me, didn’t ask my name or why I was there. He just droned on about all the conquests the Iranians had made of other countries. He frequently glanced at the large photograph of the Shah displayed prominently on the wall, as if he were afraid that the Shah was listening.

I took a notebook from my bag and scribbled in it. I shifted in my seat and glanced out the window. A blackbird jumped from branch to branch in a palm tree, pausing for a moment and then starting up again. A lizard sped around and around the trunk of another palm tree. I heard the hooting of a train and fell into a fantasy that I was on it, going back to Tehran.

After school I walked to the house, on the quiet backstreets to avoid the students who walked together on Pahlavi Avenue.

When I approached the house, I found the twin wooden doors both open. I went in through the door that led to the courtyard, hoping Maryam would be there, sitting with Mohtaram, talking to her about taking me back. But there was no one there.

I climbed the steps to the second floor, looked around, and saw no one there, either. I went into my room and sat on the bed in a state of uncertainty. What was going to happen next?

In a few moments Father came in. “We’re going to take photographs of all of us. We can send one to your aunt.”

Mohtaram joined us. She put some clothes on the bed. “You look sweaty,” she said. “Go take a shower first and then change into these.”

I took the clothes and went downstairs to the bathroom. Its floor was covered by plain white tiles, as was the shower area. Between our trips to the public baths Maryam would bathe me in a basin on the kitchen floor covered with green tiles. She used a cloth made of woven straw and dipped it in soap, to wash my skin. She washed my hair with another soap. Then she rinsed me with warm water she poured from a pitcher and wrapped me in a large, soft towel and kept me warm. But in this new household everything seemed cold. I stepped out of the shower and dried myself with a towel, then put on the clothes Mohtaram had given to me. They fit well enough but they weren’t my own clothes.

Out on the terrace, my siblings and Mohtaram and Father were standing around, already dressed for the photo. A young man stood behind a camera on a tripod, fiddling with the film. Pari took my hand and asked me to stand next to her. At the photographer’s suggestion we all changed position a few times. I struggled to smile but couldn’t. After finishing with his task, the photographer and Father exchanged some words; then he picked up his tripod and left. The children all scattered to their rooms.

Later that evening, Father called me into the dining room for dinner. There were guests, friends of my parents. I sat with them at the table while Ali and Mohtaram brought in the food—whitefish, lamb
khoresh,
and saffron rice. The guests were two couples and their children; one had two girls and the other, one.

Father and the men talked about how Ahvaz was expanding, how the oil business, central to the city’s economy, was thriving. Ahvaz, with its large oil fields and pipelines, was a major supply and distribution center, they said.

“But most of the money goes into the pockets of American and English technicians,” one of the men said, shaking his head.

“Yes, they come here for all the work generated from the oil fields,” the other man said expansively, waving his hands in the air. “Factories, foundries, distribution of oil to cargo ships sent to Khoramshahr and the oil refinery in Abadan. Why can’t our own men do the work?”

“You know, dear
agha,
that we don’t have enough qualified technicians of our own,” Father said.

“All that money from the oil could be spent on useful things like medical care,” the first man remarked.

Mohtaram talked to the other women about all the heat and dust, the flies, the rising prices of everything, how she missed being near her family in Tehran. Like Mohtaram, the two women had makeup on, their hair was set in permanents, and they wore imported clothes. The women didn’t focus on religion, as Maryam and other women in her neighborhood did, but they didn’t talk about the issues Father and the men were expressing opinions about. True, they weren’t covering up in front of the men, but they weren’t really mingling with them in conversation, as if they were in different worlds. The three girls, two a little older and one a little younger than me, were wearing dresses with pleated skirts and shiny patent leather shoes and white socks. My parents, sisters, and I were still wearing the clothes we had been photographed in earlier. Father and the two other men were wearing suits and ties, even though it was hot. The ceiling fan, turned on high, wasn’t helping.

The three girls and their mothers kept staring at me, maybe trying to figure out why I hadn’t been a part of the family until now. Mohtaram noticed their staring. “Nahid was a sickly, thin baby and we thought she’d do better in Tehran’s more temperate climate.”

This was similar to the explanation Father had given to the principal. I felt shame that Father and Mohtaram had to find some explanation to give to everyone for my having been away all those years.

“And my sister was desperate for a child,” Mohtaram said finally.

“You must be so happy to have your child back again,” one of the women said.

“Yes, I missed her so much,” Mohtaram said flatly.

I knew she was lying.

 

 

 

 

 

After the guests left, my parents went to the porch to talk. As I got ready for bed, I heard Mohtaram say, “She’s my sister’s child. It’s cruel to take her away from her.”

“You gave her to your sister for a little while, that’s all. It’s for Nahid’s own good. Your sister should understand that.”

After that there was silence and then the sound of footsteps receding in different directions.

N
ahid
joon,
Nahid
joon.
” Maryam was sitting in one of the wicker chairs on Mohtaram’s porch. Only two days had passed since I had been taken from school but it felt like an eternity. She was wearing one of her special dresses, navy silk with light blue flowers on it. She had taken off her chador because no men were around, and her hair flowed over her shoulders.

“Nahid
joon,
Nahid
joon,
he came and took you away,” she said in a choked voice. She got up and held me to herself. As we embraced I could smell the familiar rose water on her skin, feel the incandescence of her love.

Mohtaram came out of the kitchen and sat with us. She was tense and jittery.

“You must talk to Manoochehr
khan,
make him understand. It isn’t right to take her away from me,” Maryam pleaded with her sister, tears collecting in her eyes.

“If Manoochehr would ever listen to me,” Mohtaram said, trailing off. “Don’t worry, she’s still your child, I won’t steal her heart from you.”

Mohtaram’s words hurt me, and also relieved me; Mohtaram didn’t value me but also wanted Maryam to have me back.

“My dear, don’t ever think that I’m not grateful to you for having been such a good sister to me all my life,” Mohtaram said.

“You have everything—a husband who provides well for you, you’re blessed with so many children. What do I have? No husband, no ability to have children. My womb has been cursed.” Maryam started to weep.

I leaned against her and put my arm around her and tried to fight tears.

“Oh, my poor sister. But one of Manoochehr’s clients is looking for a wife,” Mohtaram said. “He isn’t young but he’s nice and very rich. He lives in Khoramshahr. Manoochehr asked me to talk to you about him.”

“I already buried an old man,” Maryam said. “I don’t want more headaches.”

“He may give you children of your own.”

“One husband didn’t give me any children. How can another?”

“You’ll have someone to take care of you.”

Maryam shook her head and pulled me closer.

I wished Mohtaram would leave me alone with Maryam. It was difficult for me to reconcile my love for Maryam and the resentment I felt toward Mohtaram.