The Last Living Slut

by Roxana Shirazi

  During afternoon siestas, the nightly gunfire, and whenever panic erupted in the neighborhood, I got together with my cousins and neighbors, male and female, and played our games—mummy and daddy or doctor and nurse. Skirts would be lifted, tiny trousers would be unzipped, and we would show each other our down-there, each of us examining, touching.

  I began to feel more sexually aware of my body, and because of this, whenever my grandmother took me to the local public bathhouse, I became rigidly shy and self-conscious of my nakedness.Our shower was nice enough, but going to the public bathhouse was like being reborn in body and soul. It was a ritual event, where everyone went for hours to luxuriously scrub and steam themselves as they exchanged gossip, drank ice-cold Coca-Cola, and exfoliated until their skin sparkled.

  After collecting our fluffy white towels from the clothesline, my grandmother would fold the family’s freshly washed underwear into a cloth sack. I would take my baby doll, get her dressed, wrap her up, and then we’d walk through our alley and down the hill. When the wailing of azan (prayer) from the mosque opened up, my heart would burst quietly with peaceful happiness. At that moment, as my grandmother held my hand in the Persian dusk, I felt a divine euphoria.

  The bathhouse sat crumbling like a giant cookie. Past lives and weary bones still lingered in its doorway. Inside, distant voices and muffled splashes echoed in its hollow belly and ricocheted against the high glass-domed ceiling. There were private cubicles with a shower and bath, and a communal area where women washed together. Once the clanky metal door of the changing room banged shut, we peeled every layer. With towels wrapped around us, we were ready to dish the dirt.

  The bathing hall always hummed. Child brides scrubbed until they squeaked. Skinny, old, long-haired, fat, young, gold-toothed, saggy, hennaed, jeweled, haughty—giggling women of every variety—waddled, lounged, and shared secrets. Rolls of flesh gorged on lather, the foam wallowing in the water.

  As I grudgingly let the towel slip from my skin, my grandmother would spot neighbors and relatives, and soon the chatter would start. It seemed to last forever, the steam melting into my pores, the street dirt oozing out. If I opted for a private cubicle, I could open the door and shout “Pepsi!” or “Canada Dry!” and within minutes the ice-cold drink would arrive. It was heaven. Hours later, my grandmother and I would emerge scrubbed red-raw like beetroot, our gleaming faces peeking out from snug, plump head covers to protect us from catching a cold.

  One evening while I was walking home from the bathhouse, the savak raided the house at the end of our street. It was the grandest house on the block, with blue iron gates and sinuous trees that veiled the decadence inside. It was my friend Parya’s house. She was my age, and very tall and slender with doll hair swinging down her back and cat-green eyes. Unmarked cars pulled up outside the house while the sky gurgled with a thunderstorm. Terrified, I ran home. And, from Mr. Karimi’s upstairs window, I watched while they marched out Parya’s parents and carried out stacks of books. Her mother was a glamorous woman who wore big tinted glasses and jewels, and had big hair like the women in American films. Her dad, like mine, loved opium. He was always gray-skinned and sleepy looking. I heard from people on the street that they had been keeping rifles, guns, and anti-Shah literature in their house.

  Parya was the first girl to show me her private parts. She had sat on our doorstep one afternoon and opened her legs. She wasn’t wearing underpants. I looked closely, examining her flower, red and swollen like a rosebud. It shined, slick and glossy, yet packed in so tight and lovely. Now her parents were being taken away. I never saw any of them again.

  In the midst of all this, I still felt loved. Even Mr. Karimi—I knew he loved me. As much as she could, my grandmother would take me to the shops and buy me anything I wanted. My mother continued working as a teacher, though her political activities had accelerated. From what I’d heard, I knew the Shah was a bad man, taking money away from poor people and giving it to his friends and family. This was why people hated him so much and why my mother went into the streets, braving gunfire, to demonstrate. It was the reason we went to Evin Prison in the north of Tehran to visit my uncles.

  There I would hear stories of the way the guards tortured the prisoners: flogging their feet with electric cables, depriving them of sleep, hanging them upside down until the prisoners thought their brains would explode. I’d wonder if my uncles were okay whenever we visited them either there or in Ghasr Prison in central Tehran.

  I no longer saw my father, and by the time 1978 drew to a close, my mother began to disappear as well, devoting her time to political rallies. My grandmother, miraculously, was still a ray of sunshine in my world. Regardless of the chaos all around, our alley and neighborhood remained a place of happiness. We still slept on the roof on summer nights, giggling with my cousin in the pasheh–band. I worshipped the stars that decorated the Persian sky like hot buttons. I still chased the boys in the alley. And the mosque still grieved with its sound of prayer each day and night. The rich, thick Persian carpets that adorned our house and garden still spread themselves open to me. The pomegranate and cherry trees still nourished me.

  Chapter 10

  The Rush of Hot Burning Sensation Swooshes in My Tummy and I feel like a Bad girl. I am a Bad Girl.

  It’s dusk in the neighborhood, and the sound of gunfire blitzes the sky while frost coats the chimneys. There are people on their rooftops chanting revolutionary anthems, barking and shouting anti-Shah slogans: “Marg bar Shah! Marg bar Shah!” Death to the Shah! Rage fills the air more than gunfire.

  I love the air at this time of day—the dusk, when shadows hide what people do. The adrenaline, from fear of a possible savak raid, is thick in the air. I stand in the middle of our alley—in the midst of panic but close to our house. My grandmother is inside, worrying about me; my mother is out there somewhere, caught in the brawl and tussle of a demonstration in the streets.

  All around, my friends scatter, running into their homes. Only the older boys stay. I hear my grandmother calling me: “Dokhtaram, biya too digeh, Aash dorost kardam.” (My girl, come inside, I’ve made some broth.) But I don’t go in. I want to stay outside, so I don’t make a sound, don’t let her know where I am. I like the panic, the rush of danger, the smell of burned wood.

  The beauty of the sky and stars at dusk frees my soul. I pick up a small stick from the ground and hide in the shadows where no one can see me. I lift the hem of my flowery dress, slide the small stick inside my panties, and rub the stick all along my crotch. Rub it. Rub it until it feels so good that the rush of hot burning sensation swooshes in my tummy and I feel like a bad girl. I am a bad girl. There is no hope for me. I can’t turn back.

  Chapter 11

  On one of our visits to see my uncles in Ghasr Prison, my mother took me to a different section of the prison and introduced me to a man I’d never seen before. He was rake-thin, hollow-cheeked, and as dark as tea. He was smaller than my father, but he too wore tinted glasses and had a black mustache.

  We shook hands through the silver metal bars. He had scars all along his wrists and frowned at me when I stared at them. I heard him whisper to my mum that he had tried to kill himself in the public baths one day when he’d heard the savak were coming to take him to prison. It was a bleak winter and people were being killed all the time. I was constantly frightened, but I joined in the revolutionary anthems with my mum and uncles’ friends. I knew each song word for word. And even though I hadn’t started school yet and couldn’t really read, I was given children’s books on the evils of capitalism and how socialism was the only way human beings could live in equality and harmony.

  Just before the Shah fled Iran in January 1979, the man from Ghasr Prison came to our house. We switched off all our lights and sat in the dark while hollers and shrieks on the street outside twisted into a riotous roar as men and women, their hearts filled with anger and fear and resistance, clashed with the Shah’s army.

  The man had come to stay. It
was late, and I larked about as usual. We ate dinner by a gas lamp around the sofreh with my uncles, who had also been released from prison. Suddenly the new man stood up and began barking orders at me as he pushed me into the adjacent room. “You’re not allowed food until you shut up,” he shouted. My mother said nothing. I didn’t know this man; I had no idea who he was or why he was screaming at me. I clasped my hands to my ears to block out his yelling. Tears flooded my face.

  “Come on, soldiers! Come and take this bad man back to prison,” I yelled through my sobs until my voice splintered. “He’s a bad man. He’s hurting me.” I kept sobbing and yelling, hoping the savak would come take him away. But they never did; I was forced to put up with him and his ways for years to come.

  Shortly after that night, the man became my new father. He came with grisly relics of torture, hacked and carved into his body by the prison guards who tried to force him to snitch on his friends. I touched the dents and deep cavities on his wrists and ran my fingers along the zigzag scars on his back, fascinated by the tunnels etched on his flesh.

  “Darling, leave your father alone!” my grandmother would scold as she prepared delicious dishes for the new head of the house.

  “And stop calling him by his name,” she whispered to me later that night, after hearing me use his first name, Saeed. “You must call him Dad now.”

  Dad, Dad, Dad. As I went to sleep that night, I rolled the word over in my brain as if I were learning some new language. I felt like a normal girl now that I had a proper dad at home. We were a real family. My mother had finally found someone who was just as politically motivated as she was. I was happy for her—even though he scared me with his sudden mood swings and chilling cries at night, when flashbacks of prison torture invaded his dreams.

  Soon, he and my mother were leaving regularly to march in the streets with thousands of others to fight the Shah’s terrible regime and start a new Iran. I found myself nestling constantly in my grandmother’s vast warm lap or laying on the lush carpets by the clunky heater, praying they would return alive.

  With my new dad came a whole new set of cousins, aunties, and a sea of ready-made faces who were now my family. One of these was a silver-haired granddaddy who taught me the Qur’an and the ritual of Namaz (prayer) so thoroughly that I felt a new holiness and purity take over my soul. I prayed three times a day without fail, reading from the Qur’an loudly and lovingly. Fasting during Ramadan became a holy sweet experience. Arising at dawn to pray, I felt closer to God and all beautiful things. I knew God loved me even though I did naughty things in private.

  My new granddaddy was wonderful and kind. He was my first real experience with a father figure, and I loved listening to his wise tales and guidance. When he instructed me to recite passages from the Qur’an, my whole being felt complete.

  I would also sit and watch him smoke opium. He’d hold a square metal container. Inside were hot coals and little black bits that looked like buttons, which he would melt on the coals. He’d bring a ceramic pipe to his lips. The sweet, pungent perfume hissed at my nose and smooched my lips as the luscious aroma enveloped me. I’d feel hypnotized, as if I were floating through a thick, smoky curtain into an Arabian fairy tale.

  Finally, on a dull winter day in January 1979, the moment everyone was waiting for arrived. I stood on the doorstep and listened to the cars honking, the people singing jubilantly in the streets. Slushy snow capped the pavements like moldering cake, but the air was spiked with euphoria. I walked the streets with my mum and stepdad’s friends and jubilantly belted victory songs about working-class people united against a dictator who bled the poor dry. I worried about the state of the world and whether our new leader, this kind-looking, bearded old man called Khomeini, would make people happier.

  Chapter 12

  After the fall of the Shah, our little family moved to a block of apartments that was a ten-minute walk from my grandmother’s house. There was a fig tree in the garden, and many new friends nearby for me to play with. The apartment block was in a small alley with a maidoon at the end.

  When I found out that the new regime forbade mixing boys and girls in school, I was peeved about not getting to go with my boy cousins and threw one of my spoiled brat tantrums.

  The new leader of the country, Khomeini, was the supreme spiritual leader whose word overruled everything. The people of Iran had just started to breathe a sigh of relief after ridding the country of one tyrannical regime when Khomeini announced a system of governance called Velayat-e faqih based on the rules of Islam formulated by himself and other clerics.

  Anyone opposing this was considered to be against Islam and was punished accordingly. It became compulsory for women to cover their hair and bodies. Makeup, nail varnish, perfume, ties, and cologne were seen as Western symbols, and wearing them was considered counterrevolutionary and subject to severe punishment. Denying Islam was punishable by death. Adulterers were stoned. Those who had sex outside of marriage incurred lashes. Thieves, if caught, would likely lose their right hand and left foot. Women were required to get permission from either their father or husband for almost every activity. And since the sexes were not allowed to mix, all public spaces, including buses and offices, were segregated. Even dancing was forbidden.

  This climate of fear continued to accelerate quickly. Pasdar, the armed revolutionary guards, and the Komiteh (the morality police patrolling the streets) punished anyone they wanted. Violence toward women who flashed just a strand of hair or a speck of makeup became common. I had to wear a roosarie (head scarf) and a somber montoe (a long black robe) over my clothes. I was lost in heaps of fabric; apart from my face, every inch of my skin drowned in thick cloth.

  “We’ve gone from bad to worse,” I’d hear my mum tell my grandmother in a somber whisper, as if there might be covert spies for Khomeini among our neighbors. “God, when is our country going to be free?”

  Every morning at school, we lined up to display our fingernails to the head teachers, then bowed our heads and recited from the Qur’an in rhythmic unison. I found the prayer hypnotic and soothing. In the afternoons, I devoured my class work: math, science, and literature. The hard work paid off and I achieved straight As in every subject at school. The head teacher gave me flowers and my family fawned over me. “She has a unique beauty, and so intelligent, too,” my aunts would nudge my mother, gathering around to observe me like some rare plant. “She will definitely find a nice husband.”

  I spent my free time in the alley, reading fairy tales and talking about boys with Soraya and Zari, my dearest friends in the world, who were like sisters to me. Together, we ruled the neighborhood. The other girls followed us, hanging on our every word. When they gushed, “You are a princess, like Cinderella,” my heart swelled full of love.

  My new dad ditched his job as a cab driver and started a construction company, where he made much more money. Soon he took us to gorgeous uptown restaurants and bought me prettier clothes, which I enjoyed showing off.

  I lusted after the boys who lived nearby—many of them streetwise, bad-boy types. I would strut down the street in my platform shoes, ambling around the corner where they hung out. Though I acted innocent and unaware of their gaze, I’d slide my head scarf back just so, revealing my pearl hair clips. And I’d unbutton my montoe slightly, sauntering right past the Pasdar stationed at the end of our street. My friends watched from the windows, giggling nervously at what was either my extreme bravery or stupidity.

  My uncles grew increasingly frantic. The new Islamic regime was torturing and executing everyone caught criticizing the government in any way, along with anyone thought to harbor left-wing, anti-government views—the pro-monarchists, the liberals, the intellectuals, anyone who did not actively follow Islamic practices. Even teenage girls who resisted religious teaching at school were considered potential threats and imprisoned, tortured, and executed.

  My family began burning left-wing literature in the house. Late at night, I’d sit with my parents and
relatives as they drove to the edge of town to dump boxes and boxes full of dangerous papers in the secret black waters of the river. All the freedom fighting, the turmoil, the blood spilled to liberate us from the Shah’s dictatorship had only put us in a far more dire situation.

  Chapter 13

  I Decided that I would try it with Two Boys, While in The Next Room War Songs Blared out from The Television.

  My baby brother came along, chubby and dribbly, smiling a fat, toothless smile, on March 21, 1980. It was Eideh Norooz, the non-Islamic holiday that also marks the first day of spring and the New Year.

  My stepfather rushed my mum to the hospital that day, leaving my grandmother, aunts, uncles, and me waiting for news. We sat around the Haft Sin table. Haft Sin, meaning seven Ss, refers to seven specific items beginning with the letter S in the Persian alphabet that must be placed on the table during Norooz. Each of the items symbolizes a different concept: Sib are apples symbolizing beauty, senjed is a dried fruit that symbolizes love, sir is garlic, sabzeh are wheat sprouts grown in a dish for the occasion, somagh is the cooking spice sumac, sonbol is the plant hyacinth, and sekkeh are coins symbolizing prosperity. Decorated eggs, a mirror, lit candles, and a goldfish also crowned the table.

  In all the excitement surrounding the new baby, I forgot about the holiday gifts. I didn’t need any—my brother, that chubby little bundle of sunshine, was the best present in the world. That day, I wrote my new brother a letter telling him how much I loved him and that he was a natural-born beauty.

  Six months later, war erupted between Iran and Iraq. Air-raid sirens began shrieking like caged beasts. The sirens screamed every day. They scared the shit out of me, making me think we were about to get bombed, slaughtered.