The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life (32 page)

Among the few pleasures she now allowed herself, the most enduring would be the friendship she established with Mariam, a fellow midwife at the hospital. A stout woman of forty-five, Mariam had a fiery temper and quick tongue that endeared her at once to Lili. The two chatted and took tea between deliveries, and as neither was much in the habit of disclosing her hardships, they soon found they were natural confidantes for each other.

The daughter of wealthy provincial landowners, Mariam had been raised on a ranch in the countryside outside Tehran, breaking wild horses and riding bareback alongside her two older brothers. At sixteen she’d barreled past her father, set out alone for the capital, and apprenticed herself to a traditional midwife. While paid labor was still generally regarded as the fate of only the most unattractive or destitute of women, by the mid-sixties in some quarters of Tehran upper-class families had taken to boasting of their daughters’ educational and professional achievements, shipping them off to university with parties as elaborate as weddings. Mariam had enjoyed no such support when embarking on her own career. As she was already handicapped by her own willfulness, or so her family judged her, they predicted that a professional life would seal her fate as a lifelong spinster.

Yet Mariam had married. Her tall, handsome, broad-shouldered husband, Behrooz, was considerably less educated than she, but he’d been willing to take on a professional woman as a wife, and this Mariam’s parents regarded not simply as a blessing but as a genuine miracle. As Mariam’s career advanced, however, Behrooz felt less and less inclination to hold down a job himself. His chief occupation became the study of Mariam’s defects, particularly her lack of housewifely skills. A scoured pot, a dusty mantel, a languishing pile of laundry—all were put forth as evidence of his wife’s incompetence.

“
Boro beeshoor!
” Mariam spat out at each indictment. “Get lost, you ignoramus!”

Lili rarely failed to visit the couple’s home without witnessing a heated exchange between Mariam and Behrooz. She was also present on the day that Mariam at last rounded up her three children and settled them into an apartment of her own. In years past, Behrooz could have quickly claimed back both mother and children, but the shah’s White Revolution had upended Iranian family law and so it was now Behrooz who turned up at Mariam’s door, swearing he would reform himself and begging her to return. She would not. And when Mariam’s father, a country gentleman named Shahryar Khan, took one of the family’s servants, a pudgy, green-eyed country girl of seventeen, as his second wife, Mariam swiftly hauled her mother out of the countryside and brought her to the new apartment in Tehran too.

Like most professional women of her generation, Mariam did not choose to wear a veil. Off-duty she favored tight, brightly patterned tunics with wide-legged trousers or else short skirts paired with calf-length leather boots. She was also never without a slash of bright red lipstick on her lips. But while there was little in either her appearance or her manner that suggested piety, Mariam was, in her way, perfectly observant. She kept a Koran and a prayer mat with her at the hospital, and whenever her duties conflicted with her devotions she performed the abbreviated version of the
namaz
that she considered one of the great practical innovations of Islam.

She was also a passionate advocate for the poor. When King’s Serenity threatened to turn away those who could not pay its fees, Mariam squared her shoulders and headed straight for the administration offices. “Are we not Muslims?” she begged to know. “Have we lost our compassion in this country? Do we care nothing about the less fortunate here?” Hands on her hips, eyes narrowed, Mariam eventually wore down even the most hardened administrators. And
to those who refused her appeals Mariam delivered her most chilling prediction. “Blood brings blood,” she told them. “Blood
always
brings blood.”

However much she admired her friend’s outspokenness, King’s Serenity would afford Lili a thorough education in holding her own tongue.

The admission of an in-law of the shah’s to the hospital would provide the first of many such lessons. In preparation for her arrival, an entire wing of the birthing clinic was relieved of its standard furnishings. Silk carpets were thrown over the linoleum tiles, a proper bed assembled and encircled by gilt-trimmed French armchairs, and cut-crystal vases arrayed for the masses of tuberoses and gladiolus that would appear in advance of the royal patient’s arrival.

The mother-to-be, a Frenchwoman whom the staff was ordered to call Madame, came turned out one day in an impeccable powder blue skirt suit and white gloves. She was quite pretty and, even in an advanced state of pregnancy, carried herself with consummate grace.

Madame’s cesarean section proceeded without complications, but the infant, a boy, weighed barely three pounds at birth. As the sole member of the staff who’d completed a special course on the care of premature infants, Lili was quickly assigned to the tiny royal’s care. A cot was installed for her beside his incubator, and she was given to understand that all her other duties were suspended so she could give full attention to Madame’s baby. Lili fed her royal charge with a medicine dropper, checked his vital signs by the hour, and monitored his weight gram by gram.

The hospital director quickly cordoned off a private route for the royal visitors. A special cleaning crew worked double and triple shifts to scour and polish every tile that lined the royal path. The women came in their heels and furs, the men with rosebuds tucked into the lapels of their double-breasted jackets, and holding up the rear were a large number of royal consorts and bodyguards. As the royals
swept through the hospital corridors, everyone from the janitors to the heads of surgery stopped in their tracks to bow to the procession. When the royal family then filed in to inspect the tiny infant’s progress, it was Lili who entertained their questions and Lili who, out of professional pride, stifled the instinct to curtsy before them.

Every morning Madame appeared at the clinic with her dark blond hair pulled back with a black silk headband, her blue eyes bright with worry. It was unclear whether Madame had been in Iran ten days or ten years. In either case, she did not seem to speak a word of Persian. Luckily, Lili found that just two words of French sufficed for these exchanges.

“
Il fait bien avec le petit?
” Madame would ask Lili in a trembling voice. Is the little one all right?

“Oui, Madame.”

“
Il peut quitter l’hôpital bientôt?
[Will he be able to leave the hospital soon?]”

“Oui, Madame.”

One day shortly after the infant’s release, a royal courier arrived at King’s Serenity to present Lili with a gift. “From Madame to Madame Doctor,” he said before turning on a gleaming heel. Nestled in a mass of golden tissue paper was an enormous bottle of Chanel No. 5. She gasped. The liter of perfume cost thousands of
tomans
—easily two months of her wages.

It would assume a place of pride on her dresser. Lili began each day by dabbing a tiny drop of perfume on each wrist and two more tiny drops behind her ears. She most likely would have continued enjoying Madame’s gift for the next decade if not for the clumsiness of her cleaning woman, Fat’meh Khanoom. One day Lili returned from work to find Fat’meh Khanoom slumped over a chair and the whole apartment awash in the scent of Chanel No. 5.

“I beg your soul’s pardon!” Fat’meh Khanoom wailed. “I plead for your forgiveness.”

“But what happened, Fat’meh Khanoom?” Lili asked. “What happened?”

Eyes downcast, tears streaming down her cheeks, Fat’meh Khanoom explained. She’d been dusting in the bedroom when the bottle of perfume had fallen from the dresser and spilled, in one swoop, onto the floor. She’d dropped to her knees and wiped at the puddle with her skirt, which only succeeded in rubbing the perfume in more thoroughly and dousing her in the fragrance, too.

“Please forgive me,” Fat’meh Khanoom pleaded. “Please,
khanoom-jan…”

Fat’meh Khanoom was quickly pardoned, but for months the smell of the spilled perfume was so strong that Lili and Johann could not pass a night in the bedroom without falling prey to headaches and nausea. They dragged their mattress to the living room, but even so for one sweltering summer they sweated the perfume nightly from their pores. Very slowly the scent died down, though a year later when Lili and Johann finally moved to a larger condominium on Avenue Pahlavi they would leave behind the faint but still unmistakable scent of Chanel No. 5 for all future residents of those rooms.

In addition to high-profile visits from the shah’s family and other Iranian luminaries, King’s Serenity paid host to another class of highly sensitive appointments. These, too, were not recorded on any schedule, and Lili caught word of them just minutes before they were to commence. She’d be walking down a hallway or checking in on one of her patients when Dr. Nikpour, the chief of plastic surgery, would suddenly tap her on the shoulder.

“We’ve got an embroidery today,” he’d whisper in her ear.

With the sexes mingling much more freely than in years past, “embroideries,” the quaint euphemism for surgical reconstruction of the hymen, had become, if not commonplace, common enough
to have acquired their own protocol at King’s Serenity. Disguised, as often as not, in long, black veils, the embroidery patients were whisked into a private room in a remote corner of the hospital. Dr. Nikpour always greeted these young women as casually as if he were preparing to remove a pair of enflamed tonsils or an errant gallstone, but just as soon as the anesthesia took effect his cool bedside manner gave way to playfulness and a distinct, if curious, feminist streak. Working a length of thin surgical thread between a patient’s legs with an artistry usually reserved for face-lifts and rhinoplasty, Dr. Nikpour held an imaginary conversation with her future groom. “Just as you ordered her, my dear fellow! Just so!” Then, with a final tweak and clip, he’d declare of his own handiwork, “More virginal than even a virgin!”

For every young woman with the means to be embroidered, there were many more who hazarded marriage without their virginity intact. Of these, the most memorable for Lili would always be the bride of her third cousin, Ali. Lili had fond memories of playing with Ali as a child and was pleased to discover that in the years she’d been abroad her cousin had matured into a genial, sweet-tempered young man. One glance at Ali on his wedding night and it was clear to Lili that he was besotted with his bride, and that, she thought, boded well for his marriage.

At the end of the night, when most of the guests had left the house, the women of the clan gathered by the couple’s wedding chamber. The mood was festive, with much giggling, whispering, and teasing among the women. It was not for Lili to spoil their customs, but neither was she keen to participate. She slipped down to the parlor by herself. After some minutes, Ali poked his head out the door. He was not smiling.

“Is Lili here?” he asked in a feeble voice.

Inside the bridal chamber, Lili discovered Ali’s bride hunched over at the foot of the bed, sobbing behind tangles of black hair. There’d
been no blood, Ali confided, and in his innocence he thought it a matter of his technique.

Lili led her cousin to a far corner of the room, as far from the door as possible, and then she whispered that maybe, just maybe the blood he presented to the family needn’t be his bride’s. She held his eyes until she was sure he followed her meaning, and Ali was already scouring the room for sharp objects when she slipped back into the hallway.

“Whatever was the matter in there?” one of the older women of the party demanded.

“Kids!” Lili answered with feigned impatience. “They don’t always know what they’re doing the first time!”

Fifteen minutes later, a commotion broke out outside the wedding chamber. Lili hurried to the landing, her heart suddenly in her throat. Had her cousin experienced a change of heart? Had one of the women seen through the ruse? When she reached the landing, Lili saw that one of her aunts was brandishing a bloodstained handkerchief. “What pretty blood!” one of the women shouted out as the handkerchief was passed from hand to hand. “As fresh and rosy as a blossom!” cried another, and though it was not exactly an embroidery, through the ensuing ululations, titters, and cheers Lili did not suppress the smile that came to her lips.

With Lili gone much of the day and many nights as well, Johann began to seek his own diversions in Tehran. At work he met and befriended Otto, a portly, red-faced, fifty-year-old German bachelor anxious to make his fortune in Iran and retire to the Mediterranean island of Majorca. Night after night the pair would retire to the flat with two cases of Armenian-brewed Shams beer and several packets of cigarettes. Johann and Otto’s conversations traversed the full annals of learning, not just of European and Middle Eastern subjects but of all centuries and all continents. A representative
evening would find them cracking open their first bottles of Shams over a discussion of
Das Kapital
and draining their eighth bottles three hours later on the theme of modern Urdu poetry. And the next night they would pick up exactly where they’d left off.

Lili, returning home at the end of a shift, would throw her work bag onto the floor and call out a greeting in German. Johann and his friend Otto scarcely looked up from their beers. Exhausted as she was, she felt little inclination to be ignored. What’s more, Johann’s drinking troubled her.

She’d gesture for Johann to follow her into the kitchen. “You must tell him to go home,” she whispered in Persian. “
Now
.”

“Home?”

“Home.”

“But he has no family here,” Johann would tell her. “He knows no one. I am his only friend.”

For months Johann had submitted himself to her family’s gatherings. He assumed his place alongside her relatives, took tea with the women, and drank just one or two glasses of
araq
with the men, but his voice, in these moments, suggested nothing so much as the extent of his own loneliness. He missed his countrymen, Lili reflected; he missed speaking in his own language. Hadn’t she suffered the same loneliness when she’d been sent out of her country? It was, she reasoned, perfectly natural that he should seek out a German friend.