Wedding Song Page 11
One day, Mahvash spotted the beggar. His name was Sakalak, but we called him Kachalak, the bald one. His baldness differed from that of other men I knew. A few had receding hairlines in front that gave them a high forehead. Others had a more advanced form that stretched the baldness beyond the forehead to the back of their heads. There was usually a small dip from the natural boundary of their foreheads to the newly created extension all shiny and smooth, surrounded with thick brown hair. Others had no hair at all and did not have to worry about growing a row of hair long enough to be glued on top of their hair with grease.
Kachalak’s scalp was patchy. Long dusty strands of hair sprouted around his head. Though lifeless, the hairs did not droop over the bald spots around them but instead stuck out according to how he had slept on them the night before. The dirt in the air of the ghetto and his own natural body oil that was never washed away helped give his hair body and form. Parts of the visible scalp showed white patches as though a mysterious invisible organism was eating the brown pigments of his skin, and no doubt the brown borders around them would soon succumb to the sickly whiteness of the disease.
He did not seem to have a reason for shaving. The crawling whiteness had found its way around Kachalak’s left ear to spread itself beneath the protruding cheek bone and his lower jaw before proceeding to the right side, weakening the roots of the hair follicles in its path. Kachalak was also becoming bald on his face.
I thought he was lucky to be blind and not witness his own miserable condition. In place of the dark eyeballs that everyone else had, there were blue lifeless orbs floating in the mushy whiteness of his eye sockets. One eye was often shut with sticky yellowish slime, which oozed from his tear ducts slowly, drying around the sunken eye and eyelashes and creating a feast for flies.
I had seen him many times before, when he visited my grandmother at our home to ask for leftover food and old clothes, especially close to the holidays when everyone was more generous. I could smell his sour body before he entered the yard.
My grandmother sent me scouring the house for leftover food and my dad’s old clothes. I resented my grandmother’s generosity; her gifts would bring Kachalak’s wasted body to our doors again and again, spoiling the thoughts of the holidays for me. I laid the food and clothing a few steps away from him and hastily locked the door behind him. At the time, I didn’t know that he pushed his way into the house and that my grandmother was trying to get rid of him by giving him something quickly.
On the day that Mahvash and I encountered the beggar, he was sunning himself on a torn piece of carpet in a busy crossroad close to the public water spouts. He had a tin can in front of him with a few rials in and around it. I was revolted by the sight of the thief, as I used to call him, for who would want a perfectly beautiful day to smell of rotting live flesh?
Mahvash was merely intrigued. She wanted us to circle him. “Watch him,” she said, “He will know someone is close to him.”
I watched him tap his wooden stick on the ground trying to find us.
With his slight stutter, Kachalak said, “Give, give to the poor!”
As if being blind and bald was not enough, he had a speech impediment, too. I remembered someone saying the beggar had slight mental retardation. I tried not to act scared in front of Mahvash.
“Let’s steal a couple of these rials. We can buy some candy with them. He is blind. He won’t know what we’re doing,” she whispered in my ears. Before I could react, she bent down and picked up a few.
I imitated her. A volcanic sound of rage exploded from within the mound on the carpet. I was disoriented, and my heart pumped rapidly. I threw the coins down. I don’t know how my shaking legs found the strength to carry me away. I could hear the blind man’s voice for months after that screaming, “Get her, get her, dofte mola Esghel, the daughter of Mola Esghel.” He screamed half in Farsi, half in Judi, the language of the ghetto.
I knew what he was saying—that he recognized me as my father’s daughter. Not only had I humiliated myself, I had also shamed my father, a religious advisor and community leader.
I could not understand Mahvash’s giddiness. She was as happy as ever, juggling the copper coins, giggling, and skipping all the way home. Her unbraided hair danced around her. I was horrified; Kachalak was my living nightmare from then on. Whenever he came to our house for his usual share of leftovers and old clothes, he eyed me with those drippy dead eyes. I hid in a hot closet, pale and shaking well after he was gone, fearing that he would one day murder me. Sometimes I hated my grandmother for being so kind to him.
A year later, tired of this nuisance among us, the community collected money and sent Kachalak to Palestine. In those days everyone believed that Israel was the solution to all problems, and that they would train the beggar to become a productive citizen.
We moved out of the mahaleh soon after, and I forgot about him until I began to tell my daughters bedtime stories of my childhood. As I recounted the event to them, I realized that the horror and the guilt that had brewed inside me for so many years had blinded me to the reason that a sightless man could have seen me so well. My laughing children knew that Kachalak was not blind.
After all that mischief, we still didn’t have enough money for the candy. Mahvash suggested a scheme, “Let’s go to your Dad’s store and tell him that your mother needs money for groceries.”
I did it. It worked. I think my father was too embarrassed in front of his cousin’s child to say no. I had ten tomans of my father’s hard-earned money burning a hole in my fist, feeling a certain thrill and shame at the same time. The call for adventure was stronger.
We went to the candy shop. Mahvash was right. I had never seen such pretty candy, shaped as apples, cherries, and pears. The friendly shopkeeper invited us behind the counter for a free sampling. Mahvash had warned me ahead of time, “He likes to stick his hands in little girls’ panties.” I had never heard of such nonsense, but I followed her advice and kept my distance. She took the money from me and chose the candies. We greedily bit into their velvety skins. Every piece tasted like sawdust mixed with sugar, but neither one of us wanted to admit the defeat. I spit mine out in a street corner when I thought Mahvash wasn’t looking. In the pretext of having sticky hands, she knelt by the watercourse running by the side walk, and pulled the nasty mush out with two fingers.
Shortly after, the shame came back. I wanted to go home and give the rest of the money to my mother. Mahvash and I argued in the hallway between the two houses. She thought the rest of the money was hers, but I didn’t remember such promises. I couldn’t go home without any money. My mother would want to know where I had been. I was ashamed for wasting my father’s money that had kept him working through late hours of the night.
I managed to secure most of the money from Mahvash. It was only half of what I had started with, but maybe nobody would know. My father did find out the truth that night. But when I told him Mahvash had some of it, he shook his head and with tired and sad eyes told me not to socialize with Mahvash again.
Then he screamed at my mother for not having enough control over me.
The Price of a Woman’s Education
I venerated Aunt Fereshteh like a big sister, a role model. Unlike other adults, she instilled self-confidence in me: “How beautiful you look in red,” she would say—my favorite color even now. When my mother admonished me for slurping tea like a peasant, Fereshteh arranged a tea party for the two of us. We sat cross-legged in front of a samovar and practiced sipping like Persian princesses.
Cleaning ghooreh. My mother and two brothers clean sour grapes. Picture courtesy of Nahid Gerstein.
As I quietly mourned a rejection from the first grade in the summer of 1959, Aunt Fereshteh eagerly awaited her acceptance to the medical school. The Shah, trying to emulate the standards of the country that had returned the kingdom to him, ordered the establishment of Pahlavi University in Shiraz, an American-style institution with a reputable medical school. To keep up wit
h the West, Pahlavi University imported American and British textbooks to be taught by Western-trained teachers.
One night that summer, my grandmother, my aunt, and I were walking home with plastic baskets filled with romaine lettuce, green onions, fresh dill, and cilantro, when we heard the names of the accepted students announced from a transistor radio. Arab tourists in white caftans fanned themselves on the rooftops of a motel, and a teenage boy sold spicy potatoes cooked with fried onions and tomatoes from a pushcart.
At my aunt’s begging, we waited by a kiosk and listened to the radio. She was accepted to the medical school. I clapped. My grandmother didn’t look overjoyed. Fereshteh’s laughter attracted the other pedestrians. Two young men with fuzzy hair on their upper lips gawked and moved their hands over their crotches; older men with stubble and loose-fitting pants gathered around us as if for entertainment. We picked up the baskets and made our way home. My aunt and I were flying high. Such an unbelievable achievement for a woman, what a wonderful escape from an oppressed history! Excited, we both ignored my grandmother’s grumbling.
I didn’t hear any discussions about my aunt’s college plans until a few days later. My mother, grandmother, my aunts, and three or four of my cousins helped with the yearly ritual of cleaning sour grapes. We spread a plastic cloth on the cement floor of our basement and put pillows all around the walls. My grandmother opened the Passover closet and took out baskets and containers.
My father and uncle had left very early to find the best bundles of sour grapes, and soon two donkeys limped their way through our yard. Sour grapes covered the entire room in a large pile, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands dirty. It was work, yes, but it was also a ton of fun, although one couldn’t tell by looking at the adults. My grandmother asked my cousin Farnoosh to be the first to walk in the room. Her steps were light; the work would finish early.
The yearly ritual involved separating the grapes from the vine and discarding the spoiled ones, then washing and air drying them. Every year, my father hired the same heavy-set man to squeeze the juice. In a huge barrel, he stepped on the grapes with his bare feet, his loose-fitting pants rolled up over his knees, and his “stuff ” jiggling around inside with every heavy step he brought down.
We forced the pulp through cheesecloth and bottled the juice in huge, flat-bottomed glass amphorae. The first batch was for Passover. Then we put the Passover dishes away and used regular containers to store the sour juice for year-round use.
Ecstatic and playful, that day I made the biggest trouble for myself. During the lunch break, my aunt spoke excitedly about continuing her education at the medical school the following year. Morad was the first to object. “Stop dreaming about such nonsense. A woman’s job is to get married. Plus, who is going to pay the expenses?”
Other than the two uncles in medical school, no one in the family had finished high school. My aunts and grandmother joined in to remind Fereshteh of the role of marriage and children in a woman’s life. My father moderated, trying to keep everyone calm.
During a moment of silence, a rest from shouting, I couldn’t stand my aunt’s crying and took the opportunity to add my own opinion. “Of course she is going to college,” I said. “It’s free for women. I heard it with my own ears.”
Uncle Morad looked at me as if realizing for the first time that I existed. He jumped off the ledge he was sitting on, and made his way to me in two huge steps. His big hand went up and landed on my face. Too surprised to cover my face in defense, too stubborn to cry or touch my burning skin, I didn’t look at my mother or father. Instead, I looked straight into his eyes.
Looking directly into a person’s eyes implied lack of social graces for adults, but for a child, especially a girl, it connoted defiance. He looked at my dry eyes with his own, bloodshot with anger. He tossed me over his shoulder and carried me through the yard, through the little alley, through the second set of doors, and put me down on the ledge next to the open doors of Mori-Jaan’s house. Then he smirked, went back into the house, and closed the door.
I sat there, numb, shaken, and empty. I was scared, too scared to look at the open doors to my left, too scared to think what my neighbor’s ferocious dog would do to me if he found me there all by myself sitting in the dark, damp hallway. I don’t know how long it took for my father to win my release. When he finally came, all the blood had drained from my face and limbs. I was cold and limp. He carried me into the house, and I went quietly back to cleaning the grapes and stayed silent amid the noisy conversations around me. I don’t remember any reactions from my mother. I sought neither her help nor her comfort. Even then, I knew that she was more helpless than I was.
My aunt was one of the very first Iranian women to enter medical school that year. I was very proud of her, a stubborn woman capable of overcoming many obstacles to reach seemingly impossible goals. She went on to continue her education in the United States, but she never did get married. Most men were intimidated by her intelligence, her education, and her title.
Khanom-bozorg
I became closer to my grandmother during the year I awaited an opening in the first grade. Where my mother was meek, Khanom-bozorg was strong and resourceful. She was my teacher in life before I had any formal education. My grandmother often enticed me to clean the rice with a promise of a story. As she and I inspected piles of rice on a round brass tray, she entertained me with my favorite tale, that of her first marriage. “I was only nine years old,” she said. “Your great-grandmother, Bibi, would hold my hand and take me to my fiancé’s house.”
Khanom-bozorg.
There, my grandmother’s future mother-in-law asked her to sit by a pile of vegetables and herbs and clean them for dinner to see if little Tavous was a good worker and if she was not zaban-deraz, a girl with a long tongue who answered back. My grandmother remembered her fiancé, a man in his twenties, playing childish games with her as she sat on his lap. The young bride, however, was restless in her new home, homesick for her mother. “As soon as they were busy, I ran away.” My grandmother covered her toothless mouth with her hand and laughed with delight. Through the maze of alleyways, my little grandmother ran home like the strong wind that blew between her many braids.
Every time she escaped, Bibi screamed, beat her chest in exasperation and cried, “You’re ruining your reputation! Who is going to marry you now?” Finally, the family returned her one day saying she was not suitable for their son.
Khanom-bozorg and one of her sisters, Khanom, were briefly reunited in Jerusalem after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Khanom died shortly after. My grandmother died the following year. I am very sad that despite my father’s efforts, I couldn’t obtain the picture of my grandmother’s best friend Joon-joon.
I quietly cheered my grandmother’s defiance and strong sense of self that freed her from an unwanted marriage at a young age. I desperately wished that her spirit of independence and stubbornness would also run through my veins. But sometimes, I also resented her for torturing me unknowingly.
A late summer afternoon, when the temperature had already fallen, my grandmother sat on a low stool in the yard, curing tobacco leaves in salted water. I squatted next to her, watching her rinse and hang them outside on the laundry lines. She said, “Don’t touch,” before turning her back, which made me more curious. I tasted a piece floating on the brown water. It was salty, grainy, nasty, and burned my tongue. I screamed, jumped to my feet, and spat on the ground.
“Didn’t I tell you to keep away?” my grandmother said.
“Is it poisonous? Is it poisonous?” I asked in a panic, not able to get rid of the taste in my mouth no matter how many times I spat. There was no reply.
“Is it poisonous? Am I going to die?”
Khanom-bozorg with her older sister Khatoon-jaan (left). My father searched for this picture for over a year, knowing how much it meant to me. A most courageous woman, my great aunt sold her own dowry to provide for my grandmother and her destitute children after my gran
dfather died.
“Go wash your mouth with clean water.”
“Am I going to die, Khanom-bozorg? Am I going to die?” I said, panic-stricken.
“I don’t know,” she answered, her eyes gleaming. “We’ll see.” She winked.
Put in the same situation, my mischievous friend Mahvash would have laughed. Not me. For the rest of the day, I watched for signs of death. Nothing happened. At the end of the day, when I could not keep my eyes open any longer to keep death away, I decided I was going to bed and if I awoke in the morning, then I knew it was not poisonous, and if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t.
The next day, I woke up still breathing, and my grandmother asked if I wanted to go shopping. She was anxious, she told me. She needed to get fresh air, to see people. I loved the chance to leave the ghetto in the safety of her flowered chador, to explore the unknown. The world outside our immediate neighborhood frightened me. My parents, family members, and children my own age told me repeatedly that evil lurked outside the gates of the mahaleh. Genteel-looking grandfathers enticed young children with drug-covered candy and kidnapped them to slavery. Nice old ladies, covered modestly in chadors, asked for directions, and made the children disappear. Kidnappers from other cities, Arabs from other countries, and those they hired from the local community, cornered children in quiet alleyways and took them by force for prostitution.
Evil Eye Pendant: the large stone symbolizes blind eyes; the white shells represent closed eyes. The square gold piece used to encase a salt cube to deter evil. My mother pinned this to all her children’s clothes when we were babies. Pendant courtesy of Nahid Gerstein. Photography by Jon and Jennifer Crockford.
These scary stories made my excursions with my grandmother even more valuable. I especially loved going shopping with her. Even in those days, I knew the power belonged in the folds of the little knitted purse wrapped around her waist. In our outings, she often bought me a chewy taffy bar that took forever to eat, and, when I was finished with it, I had taffy drool all over my shirt. Or she treated me to a long piece of paper rolled tightly, glued and filled with sugar. Sometimes, when she stopped by the bakery to buy a few noon-e chaee for breakfast, she bought me a raisin cookie dripping deliciously with oil.