The Cypress Tree

by Kamin Mohammadi

  The village is poor. Houses that are not made of mud are constructed of breezeblocks, the edges softened by a layer of light brown mud. Dust blows through the streets, and here and there an old, wooden door still exists from the days before metal kept the world out of the inner courtyard. The wooden doors are massive, thick and dignified, even in their weathered state; double doors with iron knockers, one side a solid knob on which men would knock, and on the other a heavy ring which women would use, so the lady of the house knows by the quality of the knock whether she should answer the door covered up or not.

  Somewhere in the village there is a wedding celebration and the sound of reed flutes pierces the air, soaring out above the jumping rhythms of traditional Kurdish wedding songs. Soon a group will gather in a circle, men and women linking hands to start the tripping steps of Kurdish dances, their shoulders shrugging to the beat, led by a man waving a white handkerchief. I have seen my father skip his way through complicated steps with a nimbleness that belies his advanced years when we gather in our flat in London and form a woefully constricted circle of four, with my mother, sister and I unable to follow my gazelle-like father properly. He may not have visited Kurdistan in nearly sixty years, but the dances are branded into his memory, and I know that whatever else his youth was full of, dancing must have been a favourite pastime.

  The women are wearing long dresses in brightly coloured fabrics, with sequins and dazzling flower prints, reaching to the ground over ballooning pantaloons. Around the waist is wrapped a cummerbund of clashing flowers and a sequinned net hangs around their shoulders. Some are wearing head-scarves in observance of the rules of the Islamic Republic of Iran but some are just wearing the netting over their hair. It is a wedding after all.

  All this I know as I lean into the wind and survey the land. Ancient, ripe and forbidding, its people poor, uneducated and living lives close to the poverty line, little changed for centuries save for some blessings of the modern age – electricity, cars, paved roads. Outside the houses are mounds of dried cowpats, fashioned into bricks, which will be burnt to heat houses in the harsh Kurdish winter, still the villagers’ most reliable method of fuel in this country bursting with oil and gas. A group of young boys are racing up the hill to examine the strangers, the baggy folds of their Kurdish trousers flapping as they stumble up the slope. Soon they will be at the top, full of questions and giggles, but I know they won’t address me directly as I am a woman and this is the Islamic Republic of Iran, and I am glad as I want to be alone with my thoughts in the wind, and I am unexpectedly grateful for the space that this imposed separation gives me. Sometimes in busy places, I am happy to disappear under my headscarf and not have to participate. The Islamic Republic, in seeking to make its women invisible, has opened up for us also a space to think, a space to be, that is not available in family life. For women in Iran, that room of one’s own must remain a metaphysical space, but at least it vaguely exists. This personal encounter with the unexpected benefits of the hejab is how I know that in those women for whom thinking is as necessary as breathing, this Islamic Republic has nurtured the means of its own destruction, little may it show now. It may not be tomorrow or next year, but I know that the women of Iran will one day take what is rightfully theirs, powered by nothing other than their huge hearts, fierce intellects and sharp tongues, as long as they have this space to think.

  I lean into the wind once more and I wonder again at how a boy born here eighty-five years ago, in a time before electricity and surnames, made it out of this half-forgotten land of Kurdistan to be sent to Britain to be educated, then to take one of the country’s top jobs, travel the world to negotiate and oversee multi-million pound international oil projects in the heady days of Iran’s OPEC power, and end up growing old in a modest flat in London studying Rumi, Hafez and Sa’adi, locked out of the homeland that he so loved by a bitter mixture of circumstance, disillusion and pride. My father has not been back to Iran since the first days of the Islamic Republic when he fled with his heart in his mouth and a stash of cash hidden in the lining of his briefcase. Unlike many others in his situation whose overwhelming sentimentality for their land eventually forced them to make some sort of peace with the Islamic Republic in order to be able to go back to Iran, my father’s obstinacy in the face of such hurt overrode what sentimentality he had for his country. I call it obstinacy and pride, but of course, it may simply be heartbreak.

  We are scattered now. The fruits of those seeds planted by Shokrollah and Kowkab, by Mirza Esmael Khan Hayat Davoudy and Ali Abbasian, we are scattered in ways that not even Abbas Abbasian could see when he cursed his children with ghorbat. From Kurdistan to Tehran to Canada to Australia are strewn the proud, quiet Kurds that carry in them still the memory of the cool air of Sanandaj. From Abadan to Shiraz to London to California to Holland to Sydney are dispersed the garrulous, hot-blooded descendents of the house of Hayat Davoudy, hiding in their reasonable twenty-first-century breasts the same pride that made our ancestor shoot her servant over a misplaced tea spoon, all champion chatterers and masters of the belly laugh.

  There in her little flat in Shiraz is Khaleh Mina, finally able to please herself, as she compulsively cleans her home and infuses those around her with her own brand of unconditional love. She still teaches me, across all these miles, what it is to live the life you are given without regrets and painful struggle. She twirls her beautiful hands with their long, manicured nails which somehow miraculously survive the assault of cleaning products every day and says to me, ‘Happiness is inside you. We have all lost a lot, but here is life. You have to look in front of you, ghorbonetam, not back.’ And she pushes her glasses up her nose, takes a drag of her cigarette and, blowing out the smoke, she throws her head back and laughs, her right hand instinctively coming up to cover her mouth, trying to contain the spirit of that laugh.

  Mehry is in her tower in Tehran, spending her retirement taking care of her elderly mother, the Sa’adat-khanoum of upright posture and brisk walks replaced by a woman with no memory, slumped in her chair and unable to will her legs to straighten so she can walk, asking throughout the day, ‘Who is that?’ as her granddaughters strut about the flat, midriffs bared. Mehry is still the man of the family, dragging her weary body up and down to her car several times a day to brave the traffic of Tehran to run errands and take care of the multitude of chores that running a household involves, while Guity is still the woman, leaving the house only to shop, and staying in to cook and wash and iron and make endless pots of tea. Yet Mehry still smiles her laconic smile, drops light kisses on her mother’s forehead like benedictions and keeps on going without complaint.

  Whether it is my cousins making good their new lives in Europe, North America or Australia, bringing up their children and stitching new identities on top of the old one, or the cousins still in Iran living in the big city or a small town, trading clothes or erecting skyscrapers, showing off or falling out, studying and marrying and negotiating the curious mixture of old and new that Iran now is, or whether it is us, our own mini-village of Mohammadis gathered around my mother’s kitchen table in London, we have all survived. Like the cypress trees of our land that have grown for thousands of years and weathered all the storms of Iran’s changeable history, we have all learnt to bend to the prevailing winds, but we are not broken. And nor is Iran.

  A Note on the Cypress Tree

  The cypress tree is native to the region between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, the ancient land which was first Mesopotamia, then Persia, now Iran and Iraq. From here it was transported to Europe where it thrived and became iconic, shaping landscapes in Tuscany.

  To ancient Persians, the cypress tree was sacred. The legend of the Cypress of Kashmar tells how Zoroaster planted a cypress tree in front of the fire temple in Kashmar, a tree that was so magnificent that people came from all over to see it for themselves. The man – a Muslim Caliph – responsible for its felling died a violent death. Within Iranian poetry, the cypress tree represents
truthfulness, freedom, purity, grace and a woman’s beauty.

  Growing up in Iran, the cypress tree was not just a familiar sight on the horizon, but also an image omnipresent in art and architecture – on tiles, on textiles, on carpets, even on the walls of Persepolis. I could think of nothing so perfect to represent the Iranian soul as the pure flexible line of the ever-bending cypress tree.

  Acknowledgements

  This book has been a true labour of love and I have been blessed with the support of many people over the years I have been grappling with my family story. First and most resounding thanks must go to my agent Judith Murray who has always walked the line between encouragement and pressure with infinite grace, and all at Greene and Heaton, especially Elizabeth Cochrane and Ellie Glason for protecting me from grim reality. My wonderful Bloomsbury commissioning editor Katie Bond was a fan of this book long before I was ready to write it and cleverly managed to convince Bloomsbury to take a chance on an unwritten story from an unproved writer – she has been a joy to work with, full of insights and indefatigable enthusiasm. Others at Bloomsbury have helped turn this book into a physical object, namely Anna Simpson and copy editor Clare Hey whose sensitive and intelligent edit made me believe I could actually write.

  Of course this book could not have existed without my prodigious family who have so generously shared their stories with me from every corner of the globe. Special thanks go to my cousin Sara Parhizgari who brought all the might of her fine brain to spotting and correcting my mistakes, but my biggest thanks go to Bagher, Sedi and Narmin who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me on this – as in every other – endeavour in my life; how lucky I am to have you … My friends have given me sustenance and succour all; special mention must go to: Kicca Tommasi for weeping over every draft, Clare Naylor for imagining the kitten heels in Abadan before I could, The J Sisterhood with whom I have shared ideas, belly laughs and the best dances ever, and Christobel Kent for sharing her tower. Nassim Assefi lent me her indomitable spirit when mine dipped, and Yurek Idzik helped me get through the labyrinth unscathed.

  Special thanks go to my love Bernardo Conti who has given me a home and a hearth, not to mention the vast spaces of his heart to dwell in. If life has to be a circus then thank God you are its ringleader …

  Dramatis Personae

  Mother’s side (Persian)

  Sedigheh

  my mother

  Fatemeh Bibi

  my grandmother/Sedigheh’s mother (Maman-joon)

  Mirza Esmael Khan

  Fatemeh Bibi’s father/Sedigheh’s grandfather

  Abbas Abbasian

  Fatemeh Bibi’s husband/Sedigheh’s father

  Fatemeh Bibi’s children

  Ali (Shapour)

  m. Ashraf, children: 5, including Ebby

  Parivash

  m. Jahanzadeh, child, Alireza

  Mahvash

  m. Jamshid, children: 4, including Mahnaz

  Mina

  m. Abdolhossein Busheiry

  Sedigheh

  m. Bagher Mohammadi

  Hossein

  Pardis

  m. Shirin, children: Cyrus

  (Koochooloo), Nazanin

  Mostafa

  Ahmad and Reza

  Fatemeh Bibi’s twin sons

  Mohammad (Mamaly)

  Fatemeh Bibi’s last son

  Yassaman (Yassi)

  m. Seini, children: 4, including Amin and Ali

  Ebby

  my cousin, son of Shapour

  Alireza

  my cousin, son of Parivash, m. Shahnaz: child, Maryam

  Mahnaz

  my cousin, daughter of Mahvash

  Noosheen

  my cousin, daughter of Reza

  Haydeh

  Mina’s friend

  Father’s side (Kurdish)

  Bagher

  my father

  Shokrollah

  my grandfather/Bagher’s father.

  Widower when he married

  Kowkab

  my grandmother/Bagher’s mother.

  Widow of the Tailor

  Akhtar-khanoum Ebrahim

  Shokrollah’s third wife Kowkab’s son from her first marriage to the Tailor. Bagher’s half brother m. Sa’adat-khanoum, their children:

  Firooz

  my cousin

  Mehry

  my cousin

  Guity

  my cousin

  Behrooz

  my cousin. m. Firoozeh, one child

  Parviz

  my cousin

  A Note on the Author

  KAMIN MOHAMMADI was born in Iran in 1969 and exiled to the UK in 1979. She is an experienced journalist, travel writer and broadcaster who has written for the British and international press including The Times, the Financial Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Marie Claire and the Guardian as well as co-authoring the Lonely Planet guide to Iran. She is currently living between London and Italy.

  First published in Great Britain 2011

  Copyright © 2011 by Kamin Mohammadi

  Map by John Gilkes

  This edition published 2012 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without written permission from the Publisher except in

  the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews

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  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN 9781408834299

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