by Parisa Reza
Seven years that they did not count to the rhythms of a calendar because theirs no longer existed: Reza Shah had replaced the moon with the sun. Seven years that they counted in cycles of transhumance, harvesting, and lambing . . . Seven years of longing for a child and of endless, fierce struggle with destiny.
As Talla tells it, Bahram was born when the grenadines were ripe. Which would mean his birth was in mid-fall. Only, according to his identity card, which bears the number “1,” Bahram was born on the first day of the year 1312, the first day of spring. So he cannot be sure of his exact birth date. His parents probably waited a few months before registering him, time enough to be sure he would live.
“When you were born, the quinces were ready to be picked and we’d already set up the korsi. I remember clearly because a day or two after you were born, you were sleeping next to me under the korsi when All turned up and I screamed so loudly she ran away!”
“But who’s All?”
“All steals newborn babies in the first four days of their lives, and swaps them for her own children or the children of djinns. Some say All was the first wife that God created for Adam. But Adam was bound to the element earth and he fought with All, who was bound to the element fire. That’s why All is so resentful, firstly of Havva but also of all women of her descent.”
Sardar called his son Bahram Amir. Bahram because, in the fables told in Ghamsar, this was the name of a valiant prince and great lion hunter. In the fight for the throne after his father died, this Bahram asked that the royal crown be put between two famished lions: whoever succeeded in claiming the crown would be king. He invited his usurping adversary to try his luck first, but the challenger refused. So Bahram entered the arena, confronted the lions, killed them both, and took his crown. Bahram’s legend had a profound effect on Sardar and stirred in him a passion for hunting. And Amir because it was Ghamsari and Kashani custom to use your first name followed by your father’s first name. Sardar had always called himself Sardar Amir. When Reza Khan was still Prime Minister, he had introduced compulsory military service, arranged a census of the population, and instituted a system of registration: every Iranian had to be registered in order to receive an identity card clearly showing his or her family name, first name, and date and place of birth. So everyone had to choose a family name.
One day back in Shahr-e Rey, the master had summoned all the peasants to tell them that the next day government officials would come to count them and give them papers formalizing their identity. These papers would now be needed for everything they did: transactions, buying, selling, marriage, and so on. So they all needed to be in the village the following morning: men, women, and children.
The peasants had obeyed. At first light they were all there waiting for the government representatives, who were slow to arrive. The sun was already high in the sky, the flocks left untended and work left undone. The peasants grumbled and fidgeted but waited. In the middle of the afternoon, two officials arrived at last, looking exhausted. Out of respect for etiquette, but with little enthusiasm, the master invited them to spend a moment freshening up in his house. He, too, was tired of waiting and irritated to have government agents poking their noses in his affairs.
The peasants had to keep waiting for as long as these niceties took. At last, Abdullah came out of the house and told them to group themselves by family and stand in rows. Most of them bickered about being first outside the master’s door. Sardar was quite prepared to be pushed to the back, but Talla demonstrated she could be authoritative and managed to put herself first in line: her husband had livestock, and no one leaves livestock untended for a whole day! She called Sardar over to join her. She stood bolt upright, she was tall, the tallest woman in the village. Sardar watched her grow from year to year and wondered when she would stop. The hem of her chador kept rising higher, her ankles were now clearly visible as well as her bare feet in their worn shoes.
Talla stood her ground determinedly outside the master’s house. It was not so much the place itself that mattered, but the fact she had secured it. She needed to drive out the uncertainty that had lingered in her heart since she came to the Tehran region, and she could do this by asserting herself, by achieving just one thing, one place. On the other hand, as soon as she had to step through the front door to the master’s house, all her combative resolve evaporated. She huddled behind Sardar and let him go through the door first. But there was nothing important about Sardar as far as the men from the government were concerned. They were exasperated by villages full of reticent peasants who simply did not understand the concept of registration or a family name, and, worse, knew neither their age nor their date of birth. Identities had to be invented for them: “Where are you from?—From Khorasan.—I’ll put Khorasani as your family name.” Not everyone agreed with this, some wanted to forget the past and now thought of themselves as Tehranis. Others could not decide. “Well, what was your father’s work?” And so on.
In Sardar’s case, things were relatively simple: His name was Sardar Amir, his first name was Sardar and his father’s name was Amir. That was the name he went by at home, and here, too.
“All right, then, Sardar Amir . . . place of birth?”
“Ghamsar in Kashan.”
“Date of birth?”
“Maybe twenty-four years ago.”
“Right, we’ll go with twenty-four.”
Then came Talla’s turn, and she was still silent beneath her chador and roubandeh. Sardar spoke for his wife:
“Put Amir for her too,” he said, although Talla protested later. “And she’s about sixteen, born in Ghamsar in Kashan.”
“Good.”
They were given two sheets of paper, but neither of them could read so they did not know which was Sardar’s and which Talla’s. Due to this uncertainty they always kept the two together.
And that was how, a few years before Bahram’s birth, his father had chosen the name of his family and all his progeny . . .
That is how Sardar arrived in Davoudieh with a family name, an identity card, and the right to vote, acquired thanks to the constitutional revolution. And like all men, by royal decree, he wore a European-style jacket and the distinctive peaked cap that Iranians named a “Pahlavi hat” after their new king. But he would not be voting in the biennial legislative elections that the master never fails to tell the villagers about, letting them know where the nearest polling stations are. Not because he, Sardar, knows that Reza Shah has brought an end to political parties and chooses his congressmen in advance, but because he believes this sort of thing belongs to another world far removed from his own. He is illiterate, and feels there is a clear boundary between himself and those who can read and write. If and when newspapers come into his hands, he uses them as wrapping. And all he remembers of them are the few photographs, which he studies slowly and carefully. He is often captivated and invents a story for each photograph, thinking, That must be what it is. Sometimes he is so convinced by his account that he relates it to Talla as if it were certified fact. Most people do more or less the same thing, apart from the masters, and even some of them: Almost everyone here is illiterate.
The only place where Sardar might hear talk of national affairs is the mosque. But he does not go to the mosque. He believes in God and the Prophet, and has faith in Islam, and that is enough for him. Sardar was a hunting man in Ghamsar, he is a shepherd in Tehran; solitary men make do without intermediaries when it comes to God.
Sardar is far above gatherings of men. He has always contemplated life from high up in the mountains in Ghamsar or from the hills in Shemiran. By looking from such a great height, he has a sense of how small men are. He knows that poverty is not the root of destitution, but greed. The distance he maintains with other people is not the same as Talla’s. It is not born of fear but of dissent and caution. Fortunately, he does not live in the shadow of a master who, like all masters, has the power to tell the
peasants how to cast their votes. Inhabitants of the Armenian village vote for representatives of their religious denomination; they would never ask a Muslim to vote for a non-Muslim.
As for Talla, she would never dream that she might be able to intervene in any way in national affairs. She would find the very idea as grotesque as blasphemy. Luckily, no one has told her about the right to vote, nor ever will, because it would make her angry, and she has no interest in women’s rights. She gets what she wants, either by force of will or by the power of her tears. And what she wants never flies so high that she has to go and fight her case before important men. Talla is mistress of her home, in her small room in the Armenian village, with her worldly goods that fit in one simple bundle and her husband whom she has in the palm of her hand.
Two years after Bahram was born, his parents buy a little plot of development land in Gholhak, under Reza Shah’s jurisdiction. And they become the owners of a house and a sheepfold surrounded by a large garden.
Eighteen years earlier, Sardar had sold his land and his rifle for five tomans. Starting with those five tomans, he has now bought a house with an upper floor, surrounded by a huge garden. He has worked tirelessly, without ever complaining. Not that he is to be pitied; he has always had enough food, and enough of his tobacco to smoke. His wife, the only living creature that matters to him, has always been by his side, and now so is his son. Nothing else—beautiful clothes, a car—has ever featured in his dreams. He sees them pass by like pretty pictures, like stars in the sky. And who in their right mind would dream of having a star in their pocket? Anyway, however rich he may be, a peasant is nothing compared to a master, compared to a nobleman. It is these masters who carry the world, who make decisions and issue orders. They may sometimes be frightening, but just having them there is often reassuring. Sardar would not want to make decisions for other people, not for anything in the world. If he were offered the opportunity, what would he decide? Nothing. Everything is right as it is: the land, the flock, water, tobacco. Sardar feels no resentment, frustration, unachievable longing, or hatred. Nothing that would motivate him to make decisions for other people, to command or change the world. And in order for things to continue as they are now, the differences must stay the same, so he leaves them as they are.
The only thing that occasionally saddens him is Talla’s changeable moods, her lively personality. He would like his wife to be softer, more gentle, not so quick-tempered; he would like her always to get up on the right side of the bed. He wishes she were the same every evening, that he could step over the threshold of his house without wondering what her first words will be, the first expression on her face. But it’s not important; he manages. What matters is that she’s there, she lies down beside him every evening and he sees her face every morning. His thirst for her, which grew stronger every day in the three years he waited to touch her, will never die.
And Talla, too, has worked from dawn to dusk, because she wanted a home of their own. Even the birth of their son did nothing to change that. And yet that birth was a miracle. Talla kept saying that if she did not conceive again after her first son died, then it was Sardar’s fault, because he had thrown water over a yellow cat. And if you throw water over a yellow cat, the cat curses you and you will never have children.
From the moment he was born, she cosseted her miracle baby. She put him to the breast and gave him her milk till he was two years old, because she so needed to feel his little body thrive. But without ever neglecting her chores. She carried him on her back wherever she went. Delivering milk and cheese, going to the bread oven. And even when she was driving the sheep, all through their travels, heading south of Tehran in winter and back to Shemiran in summer.
But the most important thing was to own their own home, as they had planned one summer night on a hillside, right here in Shemiran. And now they do.
Their union has stayed the course, for the best and against all the odds.
III
MAHINE,
A WOMAN’S PLEASURE
Tell me why we left Ghamsar and came here and worked like mules all these years to achieve only half of what you had back there: a house and a few animals! We don’t even have any land here. The plot you sold in Ghamsar was much bigger than this little bit of garden.”
Sardar says nothing as he looks at Talla’s face, its skin burnished by the passing years, seared by the sun and the cold. Only in the folds of her wrinkles is there still a hint of the original color. But in contrast to her dark skin, her green eyes are even more piercing, challenging, and alluring. He loves this fatally untamed woman. He puts his hand on hers and strokes it slowly, his own calloused skin catching on the rough surface of her hand. There is nothing unpleasant about this. Quite the opposite, they would know each other by touch even with their eyes closed. Besides, Sardar loves being the only one to know that hiding beneath this apparently rustic exterior are breasts, thighs, and a stomach that, sheltered from the sun and wind, are still as soft as on their wedding night.
“Why? Firstly, to be proud that we had the courage to leave. Secondly, so that your son—my son—and your son’s son, and his son could know the world. Ghamsar is a land hemmed in by mountains. A paradise and a prison. The men and women who live there are happy to know nothing of the world on the far side of the mountains. I wanted to see that world, I wanted to live beyond the mountains. And even if I can’t share in all this wealth, my son shall. I’m sure of that.”
For fear of looking cowardly, he would tell her his other reason for leaving only when disaster struck. In 1335 a terrible flood destroyed a large swath of Ghamsar, not for the first time. Freighted with mud and rock, the floodwaters tumbled down the mountain, swallowing everything along the banks of the river, including the house in which Sardar was born, and its inhabitants. First there was a roaring sound and the light changed, then a tower of water as tall as the mountain bore down on Ghamsar. Suddenly, with no warning. In the time it took to grasp what was happening, the time it took to freeze incredulously, before there was even time for horror, it swept everything away.
While houses toppled into the river, while uprooted trees tore up others in their path, and the clear water became more and more of a black chaos loaded with people, animals, and belongings, those who were not in its path cried: “Ya ghamar-e bani hashem!”
When calm was restored at last, rose petals floated on the water in the great chasm where the river had once flowed.
And so the Amir family settles in Gholdhak, a village in Shemiran to the north of Davoudieh; a place famous for its seven qanats, underground irrigation channels. The most famous of them served Gholhak’s elite summer residences, belonging to the British ambassador and the aristocrat Ghavam el-Saltaneh, who was five times prime minister, under both the Qajar and the Pahlavi.
Talla would loathe herself for bowing and scraping to masters, but in Gholhak she bows admiringly before aristocrats. Unlike masters, they are not threatening, merely eminent. They are quite a sight in their European clothes with their heads held high and their eyes turned to the horizon, apparently not even aware of peasants. And of course indifference is far more alluring than contempt.
At the feet of this nobility in Gholhak, surrounded by quiet and gardens, life naturally becomes so pleasant that it is hard to believe it has ever been otherwise. Gone is the bustle of men and animals, the endless coming and going in the master’s yard, and the grueling proximity with other tenants. And no more master, ever!
In Gholhak they can finally set up home. Sardar stops keeping his sheep out on the hills. He has considerably reduced his flock in order to buy the house, and now keeps his sheep in his own stabling. He also builds a proper chicken coop in his garden. It is now Talla who looks after the animals and the house, and Sardar devotes his time to cultivating the land he still rents from the master in the Armenian village. And in the great wilderness around their house Bahram plays with his friend Ali-Agha, son of
Mahtab-Khanoum, Gholhak’s midwife and Talla’s only friend. There are just two houses in this part of the village: Talla and Sardar’s and the one belonging to Mahtab-Khanoum and her husband Mirza, Gholak’s water master. Huddled within their own walls, they stand facing each other. And behind those walls, Talla is free at last to live and work without her chador. For fifteen years she removed her chador only inside the cramped rooms they rented, or occasionally alone on the plain, brief moments stolen from that life of sheltering from others’ eyes. She now spends most of her time working in her garden without her chador or roubandeh. And sometimes she has fun climbing her mulberry tree and going up onto the roof of her house, or playing with her son in her garden. And her skin, which saw no sunlight for all those years, has visibly darkened, her complexion becoming the same as Sardar’s, and they agree that happiness is a color.
They had only just started enjoying these private freedoms when women’s emancipation was enshrined in law. Reza Shah forbade the wearing of chadors, and instructed police officers to strip them from women who braved the new law. Pandemonium. Women shut themselves away at home, men barricaded them in. No one in the lower ranks of society understood the law. It struck them as a punishment. “What business is it of the king’s to rip chadors off old ladies in the street? What sort of king is he, denying his people’s wishes?” But Reza Shah was powerful and authoritarian, and people were afraid of him. On the other hand, the law was welcomed by many who had already stopped wearing the chador in private, the wives and daughters of men who lived in the twentieth century and not the Middle Ages, as they themselves would see it. In the higher echelons of society, women changed overnight, coming out into the open without chadors, in European clothes, wearing hats, long dresses, and high-heeled shoes. There were a few, particularly in rural areas, who wanted to defy the law but had no choice: Reza Shah had commanded it; this was the Reza Shahi era and his word must be obeyed on pain of death. They obeyed. Even Tehran’s street sweepers, like all the city’s lowly workers, were forced to stroll along the boulevards with their wives unveiled.