The Gardens of Consolation

by Parisa Reza

  In the streets of Gholhak the wives of noblemen and eminent figures suddenly emerged from their houses without chadors. People here were used to seeing European women wearing hats; but they were Farangis, infidels from different lands and of different faiths. They were classified almost in the same category as djinns and peris, creatures from beyond time, beyond the known world. They appeared and disappeared before you could be sure you had seen them properly. But Iranian women were their kind, they were Muslims and real.

  Some women stayed cloistered indoors until necessity forced them outside. Others did not emerge until many years later, when the law fell into obsolescence. These women simply could not imagine showing themselves without their chador to men in the street, and neither could their husbands countenance it. Given the choice between going to hell and staying shut away at home, they chose or were constrained to stay at home.

  Mirza did not disguise his anger: “This started with the royal decree about uniform. The Shah ordered all men to wear peaked caps and European suits. We had to abandon our tunics and belts for a shirt and jacket. The more ‘advanced’ even added a false collar and a tie. Most of us kept to the jacket and cap, we grumbled but we had to obey. And now look, he’s taken off women’s chadors . . .

  “People knew this would happen, they knew in Tehran. There were protests, and even demonstration in Meshed. Well, the rebels were hounded even inside Imam Reza’s sanctuary. Can you imagine? There is nowhere in the country more sacred than Imam Reza’s sanctuary in Meshed!” Mirza exclaimed to Sardar, then he pointed indignantly to the heavens as he added, “I take God as my witness, my wife will stay at home. Women will have their babies without her. I won’t let Mahtab-Khanoum onto the street without her chador—never!”

  Talla was among those who resisted by staying at home. She, who was so active and who busied around the neighborhood from morning to evening, stayed closeted within her garden walls. Neither she nor Sardar could contemplate her showing herself in the street without a chador. It had been different in Ghamsar, but from the moment she went beyond the mountain she had worn the chador, and she had not removed it in public since. The chador was the costume of her new life. And she had now lived longer with it than without it. To Talla, wearing the chador was not only a question of religion, it was her refuge, a barrier between herself and other people. Hidden like this, she was safe. If she was forced to remove it, her private sanctuary would be violated. Quite apart from her respect for the custom that forbade her showing her hair to men, she found the chador reassuring, like a mother’s womb, protective and enveloping. Since leaving Ghamsar, this piece of fabric had put a veil between her and this untrustworthy world, making it less real, less aggressive.

  Talla was not a child of the city, and was not afraid of men; as a girl she had wandered her village without a chador. Here, she was not protecting herself from men’s eyes but from life’s unknowns. Removing her chador meant being part of the real world with no protection. The spell would be broken and she would be vulnerable. But at the same time, there was an element of exorcism in this enforced removal. What if she had come full circle? What if this new world had accepted her, had agreed to her presence, and there was now no danger of it swallowing her up in a fit of temper?

  Days went by and Talla grew bored. Worse than this, her work was getting behind. Sardar could not do everything. If she did not start making her deliveries again, then the milk, yogurt, and cheese would spoil. She had to do something. Pacing like a caged lion, Talla seethed and muttered to herself. She wanted to delay the decision; the idea of living without the veil was maturing, although she would have hated to admit it.

  For years Talla would relate the tale of this intolerable power struggle between a peasant woman and the state:

  “Reza Shah banned the chador, women were no longer allowed to wear it. Everyone was afraid of Reza Shah in those days, they said he had thieves torn limb from limb, that he’d massacred men even inside Imam Reza’s sanctuary in Meshed. So when he banned the chador I stayed at home for a long time. Sardar delivered my fresh products for two weeks, but he couldn’t do everything, working the land and doing deliveries, so our produce was rotting and I had to throw things away, more and more every day. It broke my heart emptying out whole pails of milk and cream. It brought tears to my eyes. One day I was so angry I decided to go and deliver the eggs myself, wearing my chador and my roubandeh! I delivered everything without any trouble but on the way back a policeman stopped me and asked: ‘Don’t you know the chador has been banned?’

  “‘You have no respect for God or the Prophet,’ I replied. ‘You’ve all become unbelievers.’

  “He was angry, called me every name under the sun, and tried to pull off my chador. I fought back and my chador tore but he didn’t manage to remove it. I told him he was the son of a dog, and started running away. I was glad I’d told him what had been eating away at me for weeks. He ran after me but I was faster than him. With his uniform, his hat, and his stick, he had trouble catching up with me. I could hear him shouting behind me:

  “‘You’ve insulted a state policeman, I’ll have you put in prison!’

  “I turned onto my street and reached my house, but didn’t have time to get out my key to open the door. So I took off my chador and my roubandeh, slung them over the garden wall, and quickly sat myself down outside the front door. When he eventually reached me he asked:

  “‘Where did the woman with the torn chador go?’

  “‘She went that way.’

  “He thanked me and set off again. I was saved!”

  Every time Talla told this story she roared with laughter and repeated that he was a “son of a dog!”

  As she sat outside her door that day, when the policeman had run on and she was feeling pleased with herself, Talla tilted her head to the sky and for the first time felt the sun’s caress on her face outside the wall of her house and not behind it; and it had a profound effect on her, she felt a childlike happiness, it made her want to squeal for joy, as she used to back in Ghamsar over the most trifling thing. But she did not cry out, she lowered her head and looked away into the distance with a tiny smile playing in the corners of her mouth. She looked at what she was wearing: leggings beneath an ankle-length tunic, and a large scarf over her head, held with a pin under her chin. She was out on the street with no chador or roubandeh . . . and she was afraid of nothing.

  But she did not mention this when she told the story, perhaps because it is better for the sin to be laid at Reza Shah’s door.

  Bahram was six when Talla handed him a leather satchel and said, “You’re going to school tomorrow.”

  “But why?”

  “You’re going to learn to read and write, you’re going to be what they call literate.”

  Reza Shah had introduced free, compulsory public schools.

  This was the only initiative of his—apart from the ban on chadors—that the Amir family heard about or that tangibly affected them. They knew nothing of any of the others: they read no newspapers, had no official obligations to fulfill, and did not travel, not even into Tehran, not even to the local mosque. The construction of Iran’s railways, its first power station, its 24,000 civil servants, its legal system, and even the confiscation of religious institutions’ assets did not disrupt their day-to-day lives in any way.

  But they knew Bahram had to go to school.

  The following morning, on the first day of autumn, Talla gave Bahram the empty satchel after breakfast and recited a surah from the Koran. Then she blew in his face, circling her mouth around him so that her breath was blessed and would cover all of his face. Sardar, who usually headed off to the field early, had hung back. He had made a show of being busy in the garden with tools to mend and things to put away. Talla knew why he was still hovering, he wanted to see his son go off to school, so she pretended not to notice him.

  When Talla reached for Bahram’s
hand to take him to school, Sardar said, “May God watch over you!” and he felt happiness deep in his heart. Sardar’s thoughts were simple and could always be expressed in one sentence: “That’s another reason I came to Tehran” or “My son goes to school.” Then he shook his head, sighed, brought his hand to his eyes, and wiped away the beginnings of tears.

  The school has only one classroom and is set up in the garden of a scholarly Gholhak dignitary, in a building he lends to the state. As is the case all over Iran, makeshift classrooms are being used until the local school has been built.

  Talla leaves Bahram outside the school and says, “Go on,” and Bahram heads off alone in the direction his mother points.

  In the garden there are children of all ages waiting, watched over by a supervisor who does not have to use his authority this first day: They all look a little baffled and are in no mood for mischief. Some know each other and are happy to see each other. Bahram spots his neighbor and friend, Ali-Agha, and runs over to hug him, reassured not to be facing the fray alone.

  The schoolmistress appears out of nowhere—pretty, modern, wearing a skirt—and Bahram is delighted when he sees her. She ushers the children into the classroom, girls and boys together. The youngest are six, the oldest twelve or thirteen. The building is a storehouse that must have been emptied hastily to make room for benches and chairs. The children have no desks, and there is only just enough room for them all to sit and write on their laps. The teacher has a desk and her own chair.

  A scant four years after the chador was banned, there she sits in her western-style dress with her curly hair and bare arms clearly visible, as are her legs and heeled shoes under the table.

  A photograph of Reza Shah hangs on the wall, facing the children. Bahram does not recognize this man with his moustache and military uniform. He has seen postcards before, and pictures in the newspapers, but never a life-size portrait. From this very first day, Bahram refuses to sit down, frightened to face the picture of Reza Shah with his severe expression. He cannot understand why the man is looking at him alone. Clutching his satchel in one arm, he crouches under the teacher’s desk, and there he means to stay. The teacher, whom the children know as Mrs. Tabatabai but address shyly as “Miss,” is amused and eventually agrees to let him stay there.

  Every day, from eight in the morning till school finishes at noon, Bahram stays close to his teacher’s legs, and over time he becomes her protégé. She clucks over him like a hen with her egg, and when he is close to her he is always in good spirits. If he needs to see the blackboard, the teacher makes him come out of his hiding place, and he sits on a shelf along the wall.

  “Do you love me?” she asks him one day.

  “Yes, I do,” Bahram replies.

  She sometimes asks him to fetch something from her house near Gholhak’s old village. Bahram hurries off and returns in record time. He runs fast, very fast, but for now his teacher is alone in marveling at this unusual ability.

  Time goes by with him under the desk, on his shelf, or out in the garden. Around ten o’clock one morning when they are having a lesson outside, Ali-Agha’s father comes to collect his son and take him to the hammam. Mirza arrives discreetly and bows a couple of times to the teacher and then, head lowered, asks permission to take his son to the hammam. She grants her permission, and Ali-Agha stands up and follows his father. Bahram watches them leave and when they are about to disappear at the bottom of the garden he jumps to his feet and runs to catch up with them. He leaps over the other pupils, knocks over a chair, falls, picks himself up, and races on. The teacher calls him but has no success: Off he flies and is gone for the day.

  “I thought you loved me!” she says reproachfully the following day.

  “I do.”

  “Then why did you leave? Why didn’t you come back when I called?”

  “Ali-Agha’s my friend,” Bahram replied simply.

  “So do you love him more than me?”

  “No.”

  “I’m not sure I believe you,” she cajoles.

  “Well, I came back today so that means I love you. I wanted to check they were going to the hammam. Because in my house we go to the hammam on Fridays, when there’s no school.”

  “You won’t do it again will you?”

  “No.”

  Before he turned six, Bahram would go to the hammam with his mother, among women. This lasted until they started complaining: “He’s a big boy now, and he’s seeing us naked,” they said, adding with shocked astonishment, “he won’t stop staring between our legs.” From then on Bahram had to go to the hammam with his father who, unlike his mother, would pour scalding water over his head to “get the impurities out of your skin,” and Bahram would scream that it was burning him.

  The water for the hammam came from the qanat for the British ambassador’s summer residence. A thick layer of grease and dirt hung over the top of the big pool. A gang of local reprobates, who liked showing off their muscles and tattoos at the hammam, messed around, sucking the scum into their mouths and blowing it over their friends. Men washed in the pool and then rinsed themselves down with clean water from a tap. There were small rooms arranged around the pool, and some men would hide behind their yellowish curtains and apply hair-removal cream. The tattooed youths who skulked off into these dark rooms frightened Bahram.

  “Those men are interested in little boys,” his father warned him, “they have bad thoughts in their heads.”

  Bahram wondered what they could possibly get up to in those confined spaces, and missed the days spent at the hammam with women.

  He was eight by the time the hammam was fitted with showers. Sardar now paid a few extra coins and offered his son a shower so he no longer had to wash in that filthy water.

  When he arrived home from school at noon one day, Bahram came across Talla in the garden making her yogurt: She had made great bowlfuls of it, and she let Bahram taste it.

  “Will you give me a pail of it for my teacher?” he asked. “She’ll really like it.”

  He set off with his pail of yogurt and for once he did not run, but he swung his head from left to right as he walked so that he felt he was going quickly while he held the pail steady. He came to the teacher’s front door and rapped three times with the door knocker. The maid opened the door and when he asked to see her mistress, she invited him into the living room. The door was open so Bahram stepped in and, to his surprise, he saw his teacher sitting next to a man and drinking soup.

  “Hello,” he said. “I’ve brought you some yogurt my mother made.”

  His teacher smiled and stood up to greet him, but Bahram put down the pail, muttered a “goodbye,” and ran off.

  “Bahram, Bahram, wait!” his teacher called, but he did not turn back.

  At school the next day Bahram sat on the bench like the other pupils for the first time.

  “What’s the matter?” his teacher asked him at the end of lessons. “Is something wrong?”

  “Yes, something’s wrong.”

  “What is it?”

  “You were sitting with a man yesterday,” he said quietly.

  “Yes, he’s my husband.”

  “You shouldn’t have!”

  “What?” she asked.

  “You shouldn’t have!”

  “Go away, you naughty boy,” the teacher said, shoving him toward the door irritably.

  Bahram headed for the door but she caught up with him, put her arms around him and kissed his cheek.

  “Now go,” she said.

  He slipped outside and sat on the steps. The teacher came out, too, and walked past him without turning around.

  When Bahram remembered this incident later, he was reminded of another teacher who went on to become a film actress. Perhaps it was the same woman.

  Bahram did not go back to school after that, and he persuaded Ali-Agha not to either.
They went to the mulberry garden in Toutestan, to the north of Gholhak, a place that was usually deserted. They would play on the banks of the stream that cut through the garden and then go home at noon . . . until the day when Sangchine, the school’s caretaker, caught them by this stream.

  “Hey! What are you doing here?”

  They fled and never went back to Toutestan. Nor to school: They were only in preliminary classes, and their parents felt that three months of school was plenty to start with.

  They spent the rest of the year wandering around the area. They often went to Davoudieh’s ice pit, which fascinated them because it was the local attraction and they had heard that long ago a frozen body was found in it.

  This ice pit had a wall at least fifty feet high and well over six feet thick, erected facing the northern mountains. The cold wind blowing off the mountains hit the wall and chilled it. At the foot of the northern side of the wall a three-foot-deep ditch had been dug. On winter evenings this was filled with water which froze overnight, and in the morning men in rubber boots would climb down into the ditch, gather the ice, and pass it through a gap in the wall. On the southern side was another ditch at least thirty feet deep and thirty feet wide. The ice accumulated in this second pit was covered with straw all through the winter. In summer, this muddy ice riddled with grass stalks was sold locally or delivered by truck to cafes and eateries in Tehran.

  When modern refrigerators came along they would be called “ice pits” in Iran.

  Sardar no longer has a flock of sheep to drive over Gholhak’s hills but he still wanders the hills alone. For the pleasure of it, and because he needs to be high up to feel alive.