Each day that I meditated in my cell, I became more and more absorbed in my role. I had decided that I would get out of prison and that the very man who came every day to interrogate me would come to my aid. I had to store up an immense amount of energy in order to attract his attention. We never saw each other’s face. My face was to the wall, and my eyes were blindfolded. Only my hands were free to move about, and I had to channel all of my energy into my hands. My role was to fall in love and make him fall in love. My freedom rested with the performance given by my hands.
Feiruzeh’s soft voice was in my ear. “Camelia, be calm and think about the enormous energy you have inside you. Become strong. With this energy, you can change people.” I remembered the pilgrimage we took together. Thousands of Iranians made this trip to the mosque of Jamkaran near Qom on Tuesdays, which the Shi’a believe is the day of the Imam-e Zaman. In the minibuses that carried Feiruzeh’s class, all of us young women, to Jamkaran, there was more life and energy than I could now have thought possible.
According to legend, when the Imam-e Zaman first went into hiding his babs would take letters from his followers and bring them to his presence. Before the imam’s third bab died, he proclaimed that he was the last bab and that from then on the imam would be hidden in a well. The original well used to contact him is a pilgrimate site in Iraq, but after the revolution and the eight-year war, it was impossible for Iranians to visit it. So out of their love for the imam, a new pilgrimage site was chosen within Iran’s borders. One of the spiritual leaders of Qom claimed to have seen the Imam-e Zaman in a dream, and the vision told him that his dwelling was in a dry well in Jamkaran. Inspired by the blessing, he built a mosque and encircled the dry well with an iron railing, and the pilgrims throw their letters and offerings down into the well. We had been told that the caretakers of the mosque would gather all the letters in a sack and pour them into running water, believing that the imam would read them.
It was evening when we arrived at the mosque. Powerful projectors lit up the courtyard and the veranda of the mosque, and loudspeakers broadcast special prayers. Feiruzeh had told us that if first-time visitors focused, they would see the Master, the Imam-e Zaman, in some form. I had read accounts of pilgrims who had glimpsed the imam for an instant at the mosque or en route to Jamkaran, and so I made sure to keep looking. Feiruzeh and I unrolled our prayer rugs in the courtyard of the mosque to pray. I concentrated on trying to distinguish the Imam-e Zaman from amid the crowds. I saw no sign of him. We were surrounded by salt flats and there was only the raw earth and the wind throwing sand and dust into my eyes.
My mother had written a letter for me to throw in for the imam. An enormous number of women were crying and praying around the well; everyone wanted to touch the iron railing. This was the women’s side, and on the eastern end of the courtyard was the men’s section. I broke away from the group and pushed forward. The well was so full of letters that they were spilling out from the gaps between the rails. I thrust my mother’s letter deep inside. That peculiar scent they call the “fragrance of Mecca” rippled through the air, the intense smell of cheap rose water perfume. By the time I could pull my hand back out of the railing, my chador had slipped off and fallen to the ground. When I had made my way to the side of the crush of the crowds, I fixed my chador. As I clutched the seam under my chin, I could smell red roses on my hand. My eyes were burning.
I held my hand up to Feiruzeh’s nose. “Bah, bah, bah, bah,” she said. “So he picked you out of all of us? The Master has taken the letter from your hand.”
A few months later, we had a gathering at our house, and my mother told our guests the story. She said that the Master had read her letter and given her an answer.
I was astounded. “Maman, what did your letter say?”
My proud mother said that she wasn’t allowed to say but added, “There is a Chinese proverb that says, ‘The scent of a rose never fades from the hand of the one who gives it to you.’”
Alone in my cell, I looked at my hands, and a poem by Forugh Farrokhzad came into my mind:Dasthayam-ra dust daram.
Dasthayat-ra dar baghcheh mikaram,
Sabz khahad shud. Man midanam.
“I love
your hands”
I will plant my hands in the garden
I will grow green, I know, I know
chapter nine
Daisies in Autumn
1990
At Dabirestan-e Hoda it was fashionable to be in love. My cousin Elham told me she’d stumbled upon two girls kissing in the bathroom, and I had caught two girls kissing each other’s breasts behind the wall of the courtyard. The vice principal, Khanum Haj Seyyed Javadi, had a loyal group of wildly infatuated admirers. She was unmarried and had singled out a few girls from the school for friendship, walking with them during free periods. One of the objects of her affection was Elham. The vice principal’s admirers would hunch together behind her and walk along somberly through the courtyard.
I had a few admirers of my own in the freshman class, who would write me love letters and stick them on the pull-out tray of my desk. They would write poems about how they were proud to be my friend, writing about my hair and my eyes, asking for my photo. Hoda was at the center of the class and culture clashes in Tehran in the 1990s. The institution of public schools and the abolishment of private schools after the revolution had thrown together wealthy students coming from old money and new money and those from the poorest neighborhoods. Girls from upper-class families in my neighborhood, Shahrak-e Gharb, who could afford to go skiing in the winter, wore fancy sneakers, and took private piano lessons, now sat in class alongside girls so poor they came to school in the winter with cotton shoes full of holes and nothing to wear over their uniforms. These girls came from Farahzad, where their parents were seasonal workers who picked the white berries that region is renowned for or collected cow and sheep dung to dry for winter fuel. They lived in one-room shacks on their boss’s property and guarded the orchards. They walked a long way or took a bus to get to Hoda, and yet, instead of seeming angry or jealous, they looked up to and adored us Shahrak-e Gharbi girls as if we were celebrities. My sweet and polite cousin Elham, whose parents were both doctors, was their deity. Sometimes Farahzadi girls would smile at me through our classroom window when they were on break, and sometimes I’d wave back at them—but they never dared to speak to me. Niknaz, who was in my year and was something of a tomboy, was the girl with the most devotees. In the grade above us was Nava Rouhani, a fourth-year student—she came in second.
The notion of girls being in love was taken very seriously. With all of the clandestine romance at Dabirestan-e Hoda, there was no place for my presumptiveness in writing poetry, even poetry celebrating the freedom of Iranian soldiers released from Iraqi prisons. And so I stood, shuffling my feet in the principal’s office. “Khanum Haj Seyyed Javadi, bring Entekhabifard’s file. Camelia.”
My heart stopped beating. In a weak voice, I asked the principal, “Please, excuse me, Khanum Hassani, I still don’t understand what I’ve done wrong.”
“When you’ve been expelled you’ll understand that this filthy business has no place at school. When your family gets wind of this, they’ll know how to deal with you.” Then she ignored me as she went about her daily business. Even my studious cousin Elham’s protests had had no effect. My mother had forced me to move to Hoda, away from all my old friends at Fayazbaksh, in the hopes that Elham’s influence and example would make me an obedient student. Elham kept looking over at me with a worried face, and I knew in her heart she was cursing her bad luck at having such a pain for a cousin. I motioned her to go back to class.
Principal Hassani was a nasty old girl without a drop of mercy or kindness in her blood. Dark-skinned with a blotchy face, a mouth that always reeked, and a black mustache, she wasn’t the respected principal, but a demon charged with guarding the gates of the hell they called high school. And we, the damned, lived in fear of her, both inside and outside of sch
ool. In the still of the morning in Shahrak-e Gharb, she’d patrol the deserted side streets, silently and mysteriously, in her white Mercedes. Or she’d lurk around the neighborhood, waiting to jump out and grasp the wrist of any of her students she caught with a boy or with their hair showing from under their veil or laughing or even standing in a public phone booth.
“Guys, it’s Khanum Hassani!” The second any of us saw a white car, we’d call out the alert, and everyone would run into the alleys to hide behind the flower bushes or a tree. At the wheel, wrapped all in black, she’d lurch out like the angel of death. If she saw us, we were done for. She was almost fifty and had never been married, and we prayed that some generous man would come along and soften her stony heart by the kindness of love. But no one showed up to ask for her hand.
The “infernal inspectors,” the hall monitors, who were Khanum Hassani’s envoys, found the poem after searching my schoolbag. One of the little bitches unfolded the sheet of paper and gave me a probing stare. I opened my eyes wide and stared back. “It’s not a poster of Madonna! It’s poetry.” She studied the page in wonder. Impatiently I said, “Haven’t you ever read poetry before? It’s a love poem.” At the words “love poem,” the situation burst into flames. I was defenseless, she had me backed into a corner.
I kept my head down as Khanum Hassani asked me to explain exactly for whom I had composed this ode of love. I raised my chin and said, “For those who have been freed.” I had written the poem that summer for the Iranian prisoners of war. Two years after the end of the war with Iraq, the first group had been released and returned via the border at Qasr-e Shirin. It was a cause for national celebration.
Brimming with pride, I asked my father if we could go to welcome them. “The town isn’t open to travelers yet,” he said, “and I’m sure only officials and the prisoners’ families can attend.” So, again, I experienced an historical moment with rapt attention to the TV screen. I wept with joy as the prisoners came home to Iran. I felt I was there with them, with the overcome mothers welcoming their sons and the prisoners leaning out of their buses to kiss the wellwisher’s upturned hands and faces, with the crowds carrying flowers. I, too, was a part of their triumph, right beside them in front of the television, unable to control my emotions. When my mother came home to my tears, she thought there had been some kind of accident. I told her, “The prisoners have returned to Iran.” My poem read:Sh’eri baraye Azadegan
Daghtarin tekrar khorshid ast.
Be a’inah-ye dastanat nazar daram,
Ke hargez tekrar nakhahad shud.
Ah bar khak che ma’sumaneh ru’ideh
Shaqayeqra miguyam.
Shaqayeq man inak,
Asheqtar az anam ke yek lahze bit u sar kunam.
Be man negah kun ke dar tu man
Fikr natamam-e parandehra bekhanam.
Be payan-e asman mirasi o man dast bar pishani
Oburat ra dar a’ineh negah mikunam.
A’ineh tu ra khahad guft.
For the Free
Of all the things that cycle
Again and again, the hottest is the sun
I am looking at the mirror of your hands
Never to return.
And on the earth, so innocently sprouted,
I tell it to the bright red poppy.
Oh poppy, I’m so in love
That I cannot bear an instant without you.
Look at me,
that I might read in you
the unfinished thought of a bird in flight.
You are approaching the end of the sky
and I brush my hand across my forehead
as I gaze at your fleeting image in the mirror.
The mirror that speaks of you.
Iran is a nation of poets—you can’t find a family in Iran that doesn’t claim a poet. And Iranian poets love to write about love. My poem to the soldiers was in the popular contemporary style called sher-e azad or sher-enou. Yet I was also inspired by the history of Iranian poetry. Hafez, one of the most celebrated Iranian poets, writes beautifully about love and sex, and it’s clear to Iranians that the women he writes about are God. People read Hafez’s poems like divine fortunes, consulting them like an oracle. Through his writing they find God in their daily lives. My poem’s romantic imagery was common for all Persian poets. I wondered . . . If Hafez had been a student at Hoda, would even he have been expelled for writing controversial poems?
My mother was called into the school, and she came out of principal Hassani’s office seething. She said that I had been dismissed for the day. She quarreled with me all the way home. “Aren’t you ashamed? They told me that my daughter has fallen in love with Nava Rouhani and has been writing poetry to her. I wanted to die from shame. Why aren’t you ashamed?”
It was true that I cared for Nava. She liked my writing and flattered me by borrowing my notebook full of poems. She was different from the others. She had a distinct poise and was a pianist, the daughter of the famous Iranian pianist Anoushirvan Rouhani. It was because of her prominent antirevolutionary father that Khanum Hassani wanted to punish us. My “love” poem was a convenient excuse. And it was true that I had brought a rose to school for her on her birthday. But our friendship was nothing like the lurid image swimming around our principal’s head.
My mother blazed ahead. “Khanum Hassani said that she’s been watching you and Nava for some time now, and she’s noticed that this ill-intentioned girl has been using you and”—she stopped herself midsentence and then thundered, “If we tell your father, he’ll kill us all. Dirt on your head when you let them spread these rumors about you. Has anyone even once said such things about Elham? Why can’t you learn proper manners from your cousin?”
I wanted to kill Khanum Hassani. I screamed back at my mother, “You! How could you let her say such shit to you? Why didn’t you smack her in the mouth? Why didn’t you say that this school is a madhouse and that she is a raving lunatic?” and I broke down, crying bitterly.
“What should I have said? Should I have told that Madar-e Fuladzere-ye Div that she’s a liar and sick in the head? And she would have said that this Nava is a Baha’i and unclean and that she molests girls! You must never speak to her again or Khanum Hassani will kick you out of school.”
For a long time after these accusations, my poetry just floated away. It was as if Khanum Hassani had banished my muse to a dark island in the middle of a vast ocean. Mandana wrote me, “Where is your new work? Don’t let the typhoon carry your bird’s nest away with it. It is needed in the wind.” And my teacher from the club wrote me, “Be patient. Let the poetry trickle out by itself like water droplets. It will come shortly of its own accord.”
I begged to be sent back to my old school, to my friends Faranak, Bita, Masumeh, and Newsha. I kept ducking out of class to go visit them. I wrote Mandana, “My house is black, and today only crows are singing in the street outside. My street is filled with a frenzy of crows.” I was plagued by nightmares, and I didn’t have the strength to study. I failed my exams and had to repeat my junior year. Finally, because it was so embarrassing to repeat a year at the same school, my mother allowed me to return to Fayazbaksh.
When I failed my exams, I didn’t come out of my room for a week and a half. I sat and stared at the walls in misery. Shocked and confused, I thought about running away from home or killing myself. I had always been a good student, and this shameful failure hurt me and my family. Then one day my father came in, sat on my bed, and said, “Camelia, I want to talk to you.” I was afraid at first that he was going to punish me, even more harshly than a few years ago when my grade in my English class fell. He’d banned me from my best friend Leila’s wedding (she was married at fifteen). He never discovered that I had snuck out to attend the ceremony briefly, in a nervously planned escape that kept my blood pressure up for weeks.
On this sad day, though, I was punishing myself so much that it wouldn’t have mattered if he grounded me for the whole summer. I wanted to die. Inc
redibly, in contrast to the wrath I expected, my father had come to counsel me about self-reliance and hope, about struggling to achieve one’s goals, about success and believing in better and happier days.
He calmly asked me to follow him to the kitchen to talk, then closed the door and lit a cigarette. We sat at the table. “I don’t want you and your sister to marry young. I want both of you to study hard. You have unique talents, you’re different—there’s so much you can achieve. In our society, where it’s a sin to be a woman, I want you and your sister to be powerful and respected. Even when you do get married, if you fight with your husband, if he yells at you or treats you badly, I want you to be able to make your own decisions. If you’re educated and have a job, you can take care of yourself, and you won’t be forced to stay with some horrible husband for financial reasons. Learn from this failure . . .”
Camelia Page 14