by Nayeri, Dina
Ponneh huddles by the hay-spattered wall and tries to kick him away. Mustafa raises his baton and slams it hard into the wall just above her ear. Clumps of dried mud rain down on her, and her hands fly up and clutch her neck. He does it again, as if to exhibit his strength. Ponneh jumps each time the baton cuts the air just past her face.
Saba pleads, suddenly recalling something Khanom Basir used to say: A beautiful girl always manages to break some rule.
“Go to hell,” Ponneh breathes. “I’d rather be with a dog.”
Mustafa raises his baton and brings it down hard on her back.
Saba screams and throws herself on Mustafa, but he flings her away with little effort. She tries to breathe, her hands stroking her neck as she pushes away thoughts of drowning. She tries begging him in Gilaki, but Mustafa isn’t listening. Two women in dark clothes pass by the small street. They stop and peer down the road at them.
Is Mustafa relishing the opportunity to beat a pretty girl like this? It confirms something Saba has known for a long time: that the moral police don’t hate indecency as much as their own urges. Every day they think of some new cruelty—mystifying rules and grisly homegrown tortures and murders in the night—that makes Saba want to run away, to abandon Iran altogether, to wash her hands of the stench of the Caspian and be finished. Iran is finished. When Mustafa is an old man, will he remember that he once beat a girl just because she retained her loveliness despite him? What a joke. A damn pair of shoes.
Ponneh is sobbing. “Wait,” she pants. “I’ll go with you—”
But Mustafa doesn’t stop. He is huddled over her, striking without control. Sometimes, when his rage weakens his aim, he hits the ground or the wall. Did he hear Ponneh? Regardless, Saba heard and she knows the regret Ponneh will have to endure later. But now the pretty look is gone from her eyes and she is just a scared animal, the loss of dignity nothing compared with the physical pain. If Mahtab was under Mustafa’s baton now, Saba would suffer no less for her.
Past simple shock, Saba becomes absurd, picking up a discarded bag of tea as she watches her friend cower and sink lower with each blow.
The two women rush over, shrieking, “Hey there! Hey! What do you think you’re doing?” They seem unafraid of the pasdar. This isn’t Tehran, after all. Everyone knows everyone here.
As they draw closer, Saba manages a deep breath, relieved at the sight of Khanom Omidi and Khanom Basir. Reza’s mother calls out, “Oh my God, Ponneh joon!”
Khanom Omidi lumbers over, huffing as she tries to pull Mustafa off. Khanom Basir thrashes him with her basket until he stops, dazed.
“Shame on you! You dog!” Khanom Basir screams. “Are you crazy?”
He straightens up, eyes wide at the sight of the older women. Like a child, he puffs out his chest and attempts to recollect his own version of things. He puts his baton back in his belt and wipes his sweaty brow as Saba rushes to help Ponneh to her feet. Suddenly she is embarrassed that she saw any power in Mustafa’s uniform and that she didn’t stop him. Now that he has expelled his anger, Mustafa looks stunned because they can all see his true purpose, what he really wanted from Ponneh.
“You’re all coming with me to the komiteh.” He is short of breath, trying to calm down, to seem authoritative. “You have so much to answer for.”
Khanom Omidi gives him a hateful smile. When it comes to maast-mali, no one is a match for this old woman. It’s ridiculous that Mustafa should try. “Good idea,” she says. “Let’s call Mullah Ali and tell him what a good job you’re doing.”
“You can make your calls at the office,” says Mustafa. “Let’s go.”
“Good, good,” says Khanom Omidi, pretending to follow. She clutches her back and sighs, as if thinking aloud. “And we must remember to send for Fatimeh too.”
Mustafa goes pale at the mention of his sick, doting grandmother. There is a moment of silence when it seems that he might be ashamed. He turns to Ponneh. “You’re lucky. I’ll let you go with a warning. But if I ever see such indecent behavior again . . .”
Khanom Omidi nods, yes, yes, yes. “Let’s get you two home,” she says. The mistress of maast-mali—how smoothly she does it. She raises it to the level of craft—the way one might learn to hold a paintbrush or properly age a jar of garlic pickle.
A small crowd has gathered at the end of the road. Mustafa pushes through them and disappears. Saba spots a familiar woman, a thin, angular woman around her mother’s age with scholarly glasses and a regretful expression. She blends into the crowd and no one talks to her. Who is she? Saba is sure she has seen her before, maybe spoken to her.
Ponneh has to be carried home on Khanom Omidi’s ample arm. Her bruises are already purpling her arms and lower neck. Saba doesn’t want to imagine the state of her body under her clothes. A relentless stream of mucus and tears pours from Ponneh’s nose and eyes, and Saba feels obliged to wipe them, to share in the filth. Ponneh mumbles incoherent nothings, coughs, and once in a while chastises herself for having offered herself to Mustafa, a regret she will surely endure for a long time.
“That kesafat . . . that dirty piece of shit,” says Khanom Omidi, who always enjoys a good swear or two, but this time she doesn’t stop cursing the entire way home. She sings it like a dirge. “That son-of-a-dog, that beesharaf, that sloppy elephant’s cunt.” She shakes her head in exaggerated mourning then perks up. “Shhh, Ponneh jan. I’ll make you something to take away the pain. I just have to get my special spice jar. How’d you like that?” Saba wonders how Khanom Omidi can possibly risk opium at a time like this, but this is her way; life is about small pleasures. Besides, Ponneh will need the release when she realizes no justice is coming, that no one will fight for it. All this thanks to a broken high heel.
After taking Ponneh home, Khanom Omidi and Khanom Basir head to the Hafezi house to prepare dinner. Saba stays. In a tiny bedroom, she inspects Ponneh’s back. Her bruises are gruesome, ranging from a sickly yellow to deep purple. Ponneh is determined to hide them. Saba rubs an ointment on her back, helps her slip into a soft shirt under a thick, protective sweater. Ponneh crouches on the floor in the corner of her bed mat like a frightened cat, careful not to lean her mutilated back against the wall. Her face is all ash and bitter lines and sorrowful red patches. When Saba tries to comfort her, Ponneh pushes her hand away. “I can’t believe I gave the bastard the satisfaction.”
“He’ll never try again,” Saba says. “You did nothing wrong.”
Later Reza sneaks in through a small window in Ponneh’s room, the one that faces the forest instead of the road. His mother has told him everything. He sits on the mat and inches toward Ponneh; he holds her head to his chest, careful not to touch her bruises. He sings a children’s song and Ponneh smiles and looks up into his face. “Remember the extra part we made up?” he teases, and moves closer so their noses almost touch and Saba can see his hair falling on Ponneh’s face. “No more bazaar for a while. I’ll take care of your shopping.” Then he adds, “And don’t worry about Mustafa. I’ll handle him.”
Saba sits on Ponneh’s other side and tells her that she and Reza will take care of things. She watches them, tries not to be selfish or focus on her own pain at such a time. But she thinks that Khanom Basir might have been right all these years. Maybe Saba’s friends are in love. Look at the way he touches her hair. Look how he doesn’t weigh each word to see if it’s proper or pretend he can recite English lyrics. Look how a force pulls their faces in, and they have no control at all. He has probably never asked Ponneh if he can kiss her. He probably never had to. They belong to the same world, a rural place without fathers where sturdy-armed mothers rule. They understand each other. There are no big houses, or acres of Hafezi lands, or the possibility of America between them. But then Ponneh reaches for Saba’s hand. “Look, it’s the three of us together always,” she says, as if she needs them both, and Saba thinks she might be
wrong.
They decide that it would be good for Ponneh to have dinner at the Hafezi home—to be among women who worship her face, who would never have her beaten for it. Reza leaves first, and Saba stays to help Ponneh get ready. “Do you remember when we were fourteen and you hurt your hand?” she says. “Reza sang you that French song.”
“Donneh, Donneh, Do-Donneh,” she sings. “Just like Ponneh.”
Saba nods. “Exactly! You remember?”
“You said it meant something else,” says Ponneh.
“I lied,” says Saba, as she braids Ponneh’s hair like she used to do when they were children. “It’s the name of a beautiful girl. Do you want me to teach it to you?”
Saba sits with Ponneh for another hour, singing “Le Mendiant de l’Amour,” telling her stories, and coaxing her to dream about a day when they will both be married. Or a day when they will own a store in Tehran. Or a day when Saba will win the ear of the president of America and they will use the dowry money she has secreted away to run off and live in Washington, in the president’s big white palace, where Mahtab can visit them.
Ponneh jan, don’t be sad. We all know you would never have gone with Mustafa. Everyone lies. Everyone has secrets. Do you remember the day I told Khanom Mansoori that I was too grown-up for Mahtab? I lied. Do you want to hear a story about her? I can tell you a good one, from a letter about Harvard and a day when she too breaks a high heel. Like you, she wants to fix it; and that leads her to a stupid boy, like Mustafa, and Reza, and every confused man who doesn’t know what to do with his desires. But unlike you and me, Mahtab is lucky and brave and American. So when her broken shoe takes her to this boy, she can maneuver things so that it is he who ends up firmly underfoot. Isn’t that wonderful, Ponneh jan? Just wait till you hear the rest. . . .
Ponneh, why are you crying now? Don’t cry. I thought it would help.
All right, no stories. Forget the story now. I will save it for another day, for other ears. . . . Let’s go to my house. I bet if no one is watching, Reza will do all his football tricks for us in the front yard. Or we can go to the pantry and smoke, just the three of us like always. We will convince him to bring his father’s old setar and sit in a circle with our bare feet touching his and watch him pretend he isn’t excited by it. Admit it, Ponneh jan, don’t you love the feel of his bare skin, though it is only a foot and nothing else? Afterward, when it’s just the two of us, we can spend all night talking about the blue veins running to his toes and wondering when we might see and touch them again, on the hands or feet of any man. We can get high from his plastic bag of herbs and he can strum the notes of his song—the one about home fading away—his fingers barely touching the strings so no one else can hear the small sparks of music between our huddled shoulders.
Rice, Money, Scarves
(Khanom Basir)
Mahtab and Saba were very good at lying. They learned it as children, from the storytellers and the exaggerators and the tarof-givers around town. Just look at all this Mahtab-in-America pretend-bazi nonsense. Saba knows she’s lying, but she claims she has this source or that source, just to vex me. But who can blame the girl? Lying is a necessary skill now. We must hide every good thing—music, drink, excess joy, and pretty clothes.
In houses all over Iran (especially in places like Hamadan, where the father of both my sons, Reza and Peyman, grew up, where the winters are bitter cold and all you have for warmth is your friends and your water pipe and your music), the place to tell lies is under the korsi blanket. That is where you go to hear stories—a very Persian pastime, because afterward, you can rub yogurt all over the lies, pretend innocence, or you can say a little rhyme about maast and doogh, and make it all white as milk again. And how can you resist? The Caspian air fuels the creative mind, the artist, and it doesn’t matter if you’re only some nameless village woman. It doesn’t matter if your own story has long become stale. There, under the blanket, you are goaded by the spirits of the night, all those curious eyes across the korsi, the hookah changing your thoughts, tempting you to weave a good tale. Korsis are where great lies are born. I know. Telling good stories is my vocation.
When the girls were small, they liked to pretend, and often I was their victim. Mahtab especially believed she could kill me with her eyes. Once I made the mistake of saying that lately it was easier telling them apart because one of them had grown a belly. Yes, yes, I know. Don’t blame me. I didn’t see quickly enough that being different was frightening to them. Before I saw the mistake the damage was done. Oh, the curses brought down on my head, the hexes from every region muttered around child-sized bonfires. Oh, the venom poured into batches of precious smoky rice, cooked outside on a makeshift stove and overseasoned with salt and sand, presented to me as a neighborly gift. Surely they hoped that when I ate it, I would feel their anger and be sorry. Well, I am able to admit that it hurt my feelings, that sandy rice. The thought that they dreamed of me retching into a putrid hole in the ground, begging the gods for forgiveness. The gods refusing to forgive. Toilet jinns pouring out of the hole and ripping my head clean off. Yes, I heard all this backyard fantasizing. They didn’t think I heard, but I did. It’s hard not to believe it when a child calls you a monster. But I had my own boys who loved me.
The next day their mother gave them a lecture about stealing things and wasting things because the smoky rice was for a special occasion. Afterward Saba told me that she wished she had money of her own so she could just say to her mother, “Here, take this for the rice,” and casually toss bills on the table like men in movies. She said she wanted to have a big powerful job, like a foreign journalist. What a thing to say! That is why I predict a logical marriage for Saba, a husband who is either rich or distracted. She needs ease; her mother taught her to toil only for vague ideas. She doesn’t have the strength and will to marry for love, to fight all the cruelties that await lovers in these harsh times.
Soon after that, everything changed. It was 1979 and time for the revolution. Out went the Shah and in came the clerics. There were protests in Tehran about women and their hair, and a while later it was all decided and done. From then on, girls went to separate schools, they covered their bodies from head to toe, they learned to be afraid of streets. And Saba added three things to the list of things she hated: men with long beards, murals of bloody fists growing out of flower beds, and every kind of scarf.
Chapter Six
AUTUMN–WINTER 1989
Ever since Saba and Ponneh arrived exhausted for dinner, the sound of bawdy laughter has filled the Hafezi house—mullah and khanoms in hysterics over sacred Islamic law.
“I have your answer!” Mullah Ali muses as he slurps his tea. The dinner is finished and a few remaining guests are lounging on cushions around a sofreh laden with pastries and several carafes of hot tea on warmers. There is naan panjereh, fried dough in the shape of stars dipped in powdered sugar; baghlava; halva; and cream puffs. The mullah is holding a chunky metal pipe, which he heats over the gas stove. “I have your answer, Khanom Alborz! Listen . . .” He puts up his hands, unleashes that Cheshire grin, and the other guests are engrossed. “The boy cannot be allowed to be alone with your daughter, which makes it difficult to employ him as her caregiver, correct?”
Ponneh’s mother nods. Old Khanom Omidi shifts in her house chador and nudges her friend Khanom Basir. At this point in the dinner, the two of them are cooking up dirty jokes by the tens and twenties, and Saba wonders how this can possibly be acceptable in front of a cleric. But Mullah Ali is a rare breed. If Saba made any of these jokes, she would be reprimanded by every authority figure within earshot, but somehow, being middle-aged, being married, being a dinner guest at the Hafezi home gives you license to push your head scarf back half an inch, to let your toes peek out from under your skirt despite chipped nail polish (Khanom Basir’s quirky indulgence, her own private fancy-bazi), to lean back on the pillows and make testicle jokes,
even to poke fun at the new Iran. It doesn’t matter that men and women are mixed like this. They are older. This is private. And there are no young pasdars and junior clerics watching.
“Not a caregiver,” responds Agha Hafezi, the evening’s host, “he’s a doctor, willing to stay in Cheshmeh. A licensed specialist who has studied scoliosis and her other ailments. I say we forget the rules and just call it an exception.”
“No, no, Agha.” Mullah Ali taps his forehead. “The exercise enlarges the mind.”
Agha Hafezi shrugs at Saba, who raises both eyebrows. Ponneh winces. How can Khanom Alborz tolerate this?
The mullah continues. “There are ways to make a man mahram, so that he is allowed to visit her room.” The guests stare at him, transfixed. When Mullah Ali has found a solution to a problem, however big or small, he is as warm and entertaining as a teahouse storyteller. He holds the people’s attention with wide eyes and puffed-out cheeks. He scans the room with a raised forefinger, daring everyone to guess.
“The man will never marry her,” says Khanom Basir. She eyes Khanom Alborz, the mother she has just insulted. “Sorry, but it’s true. It’s not that she isn’t beautiful like her sisters. . . . She’s just . . . too sick.”
“I know! A brother is mahram!” Kasem pipes up excitedly, casting a furtive glance at Saba that makes her turn with revulsion. It is obvious to everyone that Kasem is the only person taking this discussion seriously. Am I related to this fool? Saba thinks. If he had paper, he would probably be taking notes. Mullah Ali chuckles and takes Kasem’s pudgy face in both hands. Agha Hafezi puts a protective arm around his nephew’s shoulder. Saba wants to scream at the unfairness of it. Instead, she strings together c-words from her list: coward, cretin, creepy-crawly cactus creature. She congratulates herself on her near fluency. Mahtab would be proud, maybe a little jealous because Saba has managed this feat not in an American school but on her own in Cheshmeh.