Persian Girls: A Memoir

by Nahid Rachlin

  Hours later I woke to sounds I thought were cicadas carrying on, but it was Pari weeping. I had fallen asleep on her floor. In the rays of moonlight streaming through the blinds I could see she was still asleep. I gently woke her. “Pari, are you having a nightmare?”

  She slowly opened her eyes and sat up. “I dreamt I was pregnant but something was seriously wrong. In desperation I threw myself down a steep stairway.”

  I caressed her back. As if not quite awake yet, she lay down and closed her eyes.

  “Your husband is coming to take you back,” Father said to Pari the next morning at breakfast. “That only shows how much he cares about you. We had a talk on the phone.”

  “I’m not going back to him. I hate him,” Pari said. “I want a divorce.”

  “You must give him a chance,” he said coldly.

  “I’ve given it enough time.”

  “Do you want to lose your mehrieh, millions of toomans we worked hard to negotiate? You know you won’t get one rial of it if you’re the one divorcing him. Besides, what are people going to say about us if you come back home? Do you want to disgrace us? Why do you hate a man who cares about you so much?”

  “I don’t want that money. I’m a slave to him because of it. He knows that I’d lose it and he keeps me a prisoner. He’s crazy.” Pari hid her head in her hands and started to cry.

  “Father, Pari is miserable with him,” I said.

  “Pari doesn’t need you to stand up for her.” He turned his gaze toward me. His face was contorted. He turned back to Pari. “He’s coming to Ahvaz, maybe tonight. Be ready to go back with him.”

  A loud knock on the outside door woke me out of a restless sleep. I tiptoed onto the porch.

  “Agha, they’re already in bed,” Ali was saying to Taheri in the courtyard.

  “I’m so sorry, Taheri, I admit my daughter is spoiled,” said Father as he approached his son-in-law. “Bear with her. She’ll grow up.”

  Father led him to the guest room, Cyrus’s old room.

  The next morning he called Pari into the salon, where Taheri was waiting. I watched as Pari walked into the room and closed the door behind her.

  “Taheri knelt by me and apologized and begged me to go back,” Pari told me later. “He made all sorts of promises. I’ll give him one more chance.”

  By the end of the day she was gone again.

  Fifteen

  I found a letter from Parviz on the kitchen table.

  Dear Father,

  America is so vast, you can find whatever you wish for. Everything is grand, beautiful—buildings so high they seem to hit the sky, vast fertile lands, mountains, valleys full of meandering streams. When you travel, the landscape changes continually and startlingly. At night the streets glitter with bright lights. There’s so much freedom, so many choices. It’s hard to capture it all. In America you can go far if you’re willing to work hard. You can become who you want, find the kind of people you want to be with and learn from.

  Your loving son, Parviz

  The idea of Father sending me, a daughter, to America was ridiculous. I knew that. But Parviz’s letter inflamed me.

  I began to study even harder, aiming to come first in my class, hoping that my academic success would make Father sympathetic to my cause. It wouldn’t be hard to come first, as few girls took their studies seriously.

  At the end of that school year I saw posted on the bulletin board in front of the principal’s office that I was first in my class. At home I found Father, Mohtaram, and Manijeh in the salon. Mohtaram was embroidering another tapestry and Manijeh was sitting on a chair next to her, talking to her. Father sat in another corner, listening to the large radio, taking a break from his work.

  “I’m first in my class,” I announced.

  “Very good. But I wish you didn’t lock yourself up in your room and work and work,” Father said. He turned to the radio to catch the end of the news, something about oil revenues rising in Iran.

  Mohtaram and Manijeh ignored what I said. I tried to say to myself that they hadn’t heard me but I didn’t believe it. I left the room, went to my own, and cried.

  I began writing letters to Parviz, asking for help.

  “You’re doing so well at school. I don’t understand why Manijeh does so poorly,” Mrs. Soleimani said when classes started in the new year.

  “She isn’t interested in studying.” It was true. Manijeh, now seventeen, was focused on marriage. Mohtaram was already adding more and more items to her dowry, which she had begun to prepare as soon as Pari got married. She and Father hadn’t committed yet to any of the suitors who had started asking for Manijeh’s hand, but they expected that soon the right man would come along.

  “A new radio station has just come on the air,” Mrs. Soleimani said. “They’re interested in stories by students. Why don’t you give me the one about the mother and the blind child. I’ll send it in.”

  Days later, the radio station accepted my story.

  I wished I could share my good news with Maryam but she had been out of reach ever since she went to Karbala.

  I wrote to Pari, and this time she wrote back promptly.

  I’m so happy for you, you deserve it. . . . There is so much I want to tell you but it’s hard right now. I’m still trying to make things work.

  “You know that kind of story can get us into trouble,” my father said, after he demanded to read it. “It’s going to be interpreted as a social criticism. Your teacher and the radio station can get into trouble, too. You should have shown it to me before you sent it in. From now on you must show me everything.”

  One day my school notebooks were missing.

  “Did you take my notebooks?” I asked Manijeh as we were rushing to our rooms from the porch. It was a cold December day, one of the two or three months of the year when temperatures in Ahvaz dropped sometimes to almost freezing. We had space heaters in all the rooms, taking over from the fans.

  “Why would I?” she said.

  “She took my notes, I know it,” I said to Father, who wandered onto the porch before Manijeh and I reached our rooms.

  “Don’t make accusations without any basis,” Mohtaram said, appearing out of nowhere. “Why do you hate your sister so?”

  “I know she took them; she wants me to fail.”

  “Why don’t we ever have a moment of peace around here?” Father said. “My sons are doing fine; it’s the daughters who are always causing problems.”

  I ignored this. “I have exams in two days and my notes have vanished. They were on my desk.” I turned to Manijeh. “I’m going to search your room.”

  “Don’t you dare,” she snarled. “I’m not a thief.”

  “Now stop this, both of you!” When arguments erupted between Manijeh and me, Father was careful not to take sides.

  That evening, I saw the lights on in Father’s office. It was hailing; large hailstones drummed against windows, treetops. I ran over and knocked on his door.

  “Come in,” he said. “What is it?” His head snapped up from his work.

  I began to cough, the nervous cough that still attacked me at times.

  “Stop that. What is it?”

  Finally it stopped. “Father, I want to go to college in America like my brothers,” I said.

  “You already know the answer. No!”

  I suddenly didn’t care what his reaction would be. “You brought me back here, and Mohtaram hates me,” I blurted out.

  “You’ve been here all these years and you still call her Mohtaram instead of Mother,” he said, his voice losing its sharp edge. “How do you think that makes her feel?”

  “Manijeh hates me, too,” I said, evading his question.

  “Don’t you know these things are always two-sided? I have work to do. Go to your room. And remember, don’t ever write stories like that.” He turned back to the thick legal book open on his desk.

  A few days later I found my school notes torn up in the cistern under the old-fashioned
toilet that had never been renovated, and which we never used.

  Mahmood Ardavani, the writer whose novel was published in part in Setareh, was going to be visiting Ahvaz for business purposes. He was seeking advice from Father on legal matters and would stay at our house for one night. He and Father shared a mutual friend from their university years.

  “Can I meet him?” I asked Father when he talked about Ardavani at breakfast.

  “I suppose it won’t hurt. He isn’t a controversial writer.”

  “Can I invite my friend Mahvash?”

  “Go ahead.”

  At school I looked for Mahvash immediately and told her about Ardavani’s visit. “That’s so exciting,” she said. “I can’t believe he’s actually going to be staying at your house.”

  “You’ll be coming over and we’ll meet him together.”

  After classes we went to Café du Park to have ice cream. We sat in the shade of a clump of trees to talk about Ardavani. He had just published a new novel and we wondered if it contained some of the themes of the novel we had read segments of in Setareh.

  “We should get a copy each and have him autograph them for us,” Mahvash suggested.

  “Yes, we should get them soon, before his visit.”

  Several familiar figures came in—the boy who wore a yellow shirt and a black tie and waited at street corners for girls to pass by; another boy, tall and gaunt, who walked up and down in front of our school whenever the people in authority weren’t around to chase him away. The boys had at times followed us from one winding street to another. We turned our backs to them and went on talking about Ardavani.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to say to him,” Mahvash said.

  “I can’t imagine being face-to-face with him.”

  Finally we left the café and went our separate ways. At home I noticed Mohtaram was already preparing for Ardavani’s arrival, which was a week away. With Ali’s help she got the guest room ready for him to sleep in and planned menus for breakfast and dinner. “I don’t understand why we have to entertain him. He could stay in a hotel,” she complained to Ali.

  On the day of Ardavani’s arrival, Mahvash and I, before leaving school for my house, took off the gray uniforms we were wearing over our dresses. It was early fall and we both had on printed cotton dresses, mine with designs of bright butterflies, and Mahvash’s with leaves. On the way we stopped at Tabatabai Bookstore and each bought a hardcover copy of Ardavani’s latest novel.

  At home we went to my room and waited for Father to call us in to meet Ardavani. Shortly after we arrived Father came to the door.

  “Don’t you two ever get tired of chattering?” Father asked. “Come to the salon.”

  We followed, carrying the books.

  Mahmood Ardavani was sitting alone on the sofa, holding a glass of arak. He looked just like the photograph of him on the jacket of his latest book—penetrating dark eyes and wild dark hair. He was wearing a bright yellow shirt with the top buttons open and casual khaki pants, a contrast to Father’s suit. Father introduced us and Ardavani greeted us warmly.

  We were silent. I felt a tremor inside from just being in his presence; the air around me felt charged. The words I had prepared to say—“I wish we knew what happened in the novel that was printed in . . .” or, “I’m pleased to be in the presence of a writer”—escaped me and I glanced toward the window.

  “I’m so happy to meet you after reading your work,” I finally managed to say.

  “Thank you. I’m very flattered,” he said. He looked at Mahvash.

  “I’m pleased to meet you,” Mahvash said, blushing.

  I noticed they looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment.

  “You two are classmates?” Ardavani asked.

  “Yes. We’ve always admired your work,” I said.

  “I am so pleased to know that lovely girls like you are my readers.”

  Mahvash raised the book she was holding so that he could see it.

  He smiled. “I see you have a copy of the same book,” he said to me. “Shall I autograph them for you?”

  Mahvash and I nodded.

  He took the books and thought for a moment. He wrote something in one book and then the other. He gave the books back to us. “Do me a favor. Don’t read what I wrote for you now. Save them for later.”

  Mahvash and I nodded.

  “Sit down. Tell me what other things you read.”

  We sat down.

  “We read Hafiz and Saadi for school,” Mahvash said.

  “And we read the Ahvaz Monthly and Setareh,” I said.

  “Very good. I had no idea lovely girls like you have an interest in reading.”

  Father looked impatient. “Mr. Ardavani and I have business to discuss,” he said. “I’m sorry to say we won’t be eating here tonight. We have to meet someone.”

  Mahvash and I stood.

  “I’m happy to have had the pleasure of meeting you,” Ardavani said, smiling.

  We watched them leave, then raced back to my room to read the inscriptions.

  For me he had written:

  One morning I woke and realized I was in love with a dark-eyed, dark-haired girl with a mole on her upper lip. Now every time I see a girl looking like that I recall that faraway love and fall in love again.

  For Mahvash he had written:

  Your ethereal beauty will always remain food for the imagination of the poet.

  “He liked you better than me,” Mahvash said.

  “Yours sounds better to me, more grand.”

  “It’s so impersonal.”

  “He kept his eyes on you almost the whole time,” I said.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and finally got out of bed. I walked to the window. The night air was crisp and clear, the sky crowded with innumerable stars. I could see the light was on in Ardavani’s room. I wondered if he was reading or had fallen asleep with the lamp on. I pondered tiptoeing over to his room, talking to him, having him all to myself.

  At school the next morning, Mahvash was cool and distant. All day she kept to herself. Her eyes seemed focused on a view that I could no longer see.

  Two weeks passed without the two of us speaking. Then I came across her standing on the Karoon River bridge, staring down at the water. She was wearing the dress she had on when we met Mahmood Ardavani. I walked over and stood next to her.

  “Oh, you!” She grabbed my hand and then let go.

  “Tell me, why have you been avoiding me?” I asked.

  “Oh, no reason.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “You must know,” Mahvash said after a long pause. “It was what happened with Ardavani, what he wrote for you coming spontaneously from him. I envied you so much for it. I just had to avoid you until the feelings passed.” Her voice sounded hollow and far away. I felt a chill listening to a voice that was almost unrecognizable.

  “Oh, that’s so silly,” I managed to say.

  “When we were in the room with him, I wished so much for you to be out of the room—you and your father. I wanted so badly to be alone with Ardavani,” Mahvash went on.

  I thought how I had had similar feelings. “All that is in the past,” I said.

  The confession helped us resume our friendship. We never saw Ardavani again.

  Sixteen

  Javad Golestani lived in Abadan, an oil refinery town about two hours away from Ahvaz by car. He was a doctor, came from a good family—some of whom lived in Ahvaz and were the ones who had first noticed Manijeh—and he was handsome. He was tall, with olive skin and unusual purple-green eyes, as well as a hooked nose that actually enhanced his appearance.

  Manijeh would have gone along with any man our parents approved of, having absolute trust in their judgment, but as it was she was in love with Javad from afar. And it wasn’t just his good looks. Though she herself had never been studious, she admired him for being educated and for his erudite way of talking.

  “He has everythi
ng,” she told Mohtaram. “Good looks, education.” Now, preoccupied with her impending marriage, she flunked all her courses at midyear exams. She was in her final year in high school but decided to drop out instead of repeating the exams. Father and Mohtaram thought she should finish now that she was so close to graduating, but Manijeh didn’t see the point of it. She didn’t like studying and her friends were dropping out one by one to get married. Manijeh now spent much of her time preening in front of the mirror.

  But then I became aware of tension surrounding the marriage proposal. I overheard Mohtaram say to Father, “Javad’s mother keeps changing the date of the engagement. She says one thing and then something else.” I didn’t hear Father’s response. But on the same day Mohtaram told Father, “Manijeh is going to be so upset if Javad backs out.”

  There was tension in the air every time Javad’s or his mother’s name came up.

  The thought of Manijeh getting married and being out of the house gave me a feeling of relief but at the same time of dread. I was next in line.

  Manijeh

  Again, I tried to talk to Father about sending me to America, telling him how well I had done at midterm and reminding him I had come in first in my class the year before. But he brushed me off.