Strange Times, My Dear

by Nahid Mozaffari

  She is more mellowed in this photo than in the earlier ones. With her checkered veil spread on her shoulders, with her sleepy, tired eyes, she holds her head high in resignation. Her face is laced with premature lines, like cracked antique china. The lines create a kind of paradoxical mood — not exactly weary and yet not exactly fresh. No longer does she wear the witty, gay expression she used to have in the years before the Third of Pisces Coup d’État of 1921. She looks determined and serious, as though she listens to no one and her business is separate from other people’s.

  My Bee Bee came out to the courtyard and asked my Khan Brother Zia, “What happened, Agha?”

  My Khan Brother Zia said, “Nothing much. I burned my thumb.”

  “Shall I bring cold water and soap to stop the pain?”

  “No thank you. It’ll get better on its own.”

  “Please come in, then. Lunch is ready.”

  We went to the telephone room. A tablecloth was spread on the carpet. There was vegetable pilaf and fish for lunch. They had seated Iran at one corner of the cloth and placed before her a copper bowl of rice and fish. She picked up handfuls of rice and stuffed them hurriedly into her mouth, as though she couldn’t wait. I couldn’t understand why my Khan Brother Zia paid no attention to her. He rested his hand on the pillar of a molded plaster niche and stood waiting. My mother looked worried. She opened the door to the veranda and called her husband, “Doctor, Doctor!”

  My Khan Papa Doctor’s voice rose from the library. “What is it, Miss Asiah?”

  “Lunch is ready. Please come.”

  After a few minutes, I heard Mademoiselle Sonia and my Khan Papa Doctor laughing in the hall. They entered together, tipsy and sweating. My Khan Papa Doctor begged Mademoiselle Sonia to occupy the head place at the table. Then he caught sight of Iran. He pulled himself up and asked my Bee Bee, irritably, “You have brought her here for what purpose? Tell Zahra Soltan to take her to her room and let her eat lunch there.”

  My Bee Bee said, “Doctor, Iran’s not interfering with anything. She doesn’t bother anyone. If she sits here with us and eats her lunch, what’s the harm?”

  “Miss Asiah, don’t you see we have a guest — a stranger and a foreigner?”

  Suddenly, my Khan Brother Zia stood up and opened the courtyard window wide. Then he came back and gathered the corners of the tablecloth, and with one shake he threw the tablecloth and all that was on it out the window. He gripped the wrist of Mademoiselle Sonia, who looked baffled, and he dragged her out across the courtyard. He heaved her through the street door and slammed it shut behind him.

  My Bee Bee had become as pale as chalk and was trembling like a willow. It was obvious that the doggish temper of my Khan Papa Doctor had surfaced. Blood rushed into his face, and anger made his eyelids puffy. He shook his finger at my Bee Bee and said, “Never again let that mule into this house. Don’t ever let me see that miserable face of his. If he sets his foot in this house again, I’ll make sure that the biggest piece left of him will be his ear.”

  My Bee Bee caught her breath and said, “Doctor, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Call me Doctor Snake Venom. Call me Doctor Pain and Illness.”

  “Don’t say such things. He’s your son, Doctor. He’ll do himself some harm. Then you’ll be sorry.”

  “Let him; it’s one dog less.”

  Then, without eating lunch, my Khan Papa Doctor left the telephone room for the library. He locked the door behind him and pulled the shades down.

  I hid; I didn’t want anyone to notice me. Without deciding to, I went to my Khan Brother Zia’s room. They hadn’t sealed it yet. Inside the room, I stood in front of his closet mirror and looked at my own face; I don’t know why. It seemed to me that my face with its tall and drumlike forehead, the round head, the bladelike nose, was a reminder of an animal violence — the boar claw that suddenly scratches.

  I asked myself, now, what I was hunting in that room. On what business had I come? If I were going to find my Khan Brother Zia, I would have to hit the alley outside the old house.

  This is the scene that seemed to appear in my mind: a patch of wet, heavy clouds rises before me. Somewhere far away, behind the Elburz Mountains or in the middle of the highway to Chalus, a thunderstorm is wetting the northern forests. In the dust of the storm I see the square black body of a carriage. The carriage driver is bent over, whip in hand, protecting his face from the wind with his sleeve. When he arrives in front of our house, he pulls back on the reins. He glances at my Khan Brother Zia, who is standing at the door in his sailor suit. As soon as my Khan Brother Zia sees the driver, he bursts out crying. The driver says, “Little Agha, this is not the time for crying. Hop up and let’s go. Miss Homayundokht, your Bee Bee, has had something happen to her. We’re going to take her to the holy shrine in Karbala.”

  My Khan Brother Zia swallows his tears and asks, “Then where is little Iran?”

  “Your sister is feeling upset. We have to bring a doctor for her. When we bring him, he’ll write a prescription and make her healthy and fat. Then you can see her, too.”

  They lift my Khan Brother Zia from the ground and place him in the carriage. The driver’s whip snaps and the carriage moves away. As it fades into the dust and the whistling of the wind, the driver keeps turning his head and looking at my Khan Brother Zia with the filmed, malicious eyes of a beggar.

  All my family used to say that I was an imagining person, that I believed whatever came to my mind. It was true. Eleven years ago, in fact, I imagined that I saw Homayundokht, God forgive her soul. It was when I was standing in front of the old fig tree. I looked through the dirty, cobwebbed windowpane into the room of Homayundokht, God forgive her soul. I tried to make out the details of the alarm clock that her Dear Daddy, the late Mirza Yousef, had brought her from Petersburg. In the darkness, I couldn’t see very well. I could just discern the vague, borderless outlines of the dolls that she herself had knitted with her own hands and arranged on the mantel with such artistry and good taste. A big copy of The Queen of Birds hung on the opposite wall. The Queen of Birds held her palms together and turned her passionate, innocent gaze upon the sky. And what pearl and emerald necklaces she wore on her white crystal neck, and what diamond and topaz rings on her slender hands! A paragon of beauty, popularity, and virtue.

  Now, my family says this is just more of my showing off, something to make me seem dramatic — a self-indulgence, like my habit of talking as if I were reading from an ancient tale — but the truth of the matter is, that night eleven years ago I was inspired to take the hurricane lamp from the niche, climb the stairs, and go to the rooftop. In the middle of the stairs, I was overcome by the sensation of a presence. I felt goose bumps and a cold breeze on my skin. A few steps higher stood Homayundokht, God forgive her soul, with a green umbrella in her hand. I couldn’t believe it. It knocked the wind out of me. For a twelve-year-old boy to be granted such a privilege? She wore a white lace gown and she raised the umbrella over her head and looked at me intensely. I gathered my voice and asked, “Homayundokht, is that you? Are we asleep? Are we awake? Where are we?”

  She didn’t answer. Just like a new bride who has painted her face with seven brushes, she went up the stairs and I followed. On the rooftop, we saw the sky decorated with half a million stars, dazzling our eyes. She beckoned to me. When I stepped forward, the smell of her lavender perfume made me giddy. She put her hand inside her glass bead purse, took out the dark mirror of the Master Assar, and held it up so she could watch the world with the eyes of a painter. What a strange mirror! All around it was enamelwork and jewel-studded patterns. And how elegantly Homayundokht, God forgive her soul, held its silver handle with those fingers which, in their satin gloves, looked white as snow! I told myself, Oh, my God, who am I to be in this royal court? She conveyed to me that I must seize the moment, that the nightingale had no more than an instant to sing. I didn’t understand. I thought she wanted me to sing a song. I started singing, “Portrait maker and p
ainter of china, go and see the face of my beloved ...” She listened and didn’t shift her gaze from the sky. When I stopped, she smiled regretfully. I sensed that we had lost our chance and would have to endure until our next turn. She spun her green umbrella over her head and disappeared in the dark.

  Who knows? Maybe, after eleven years, our next turn had finally arrived.

  — Translated by the author

  Prose

  Part Two

  Shahrnush Parsipur

  Shahrnush Parsipur was born in 1946 in Tehran. She received her B.A. in sociology from Tehran University in 1973 and studied Chinese language and civilization at the Sorbonne from 1976 to 1980. While holding a variety of office jobs, she began her literary career with the publication of the novel The Dog and the Long Winter in 1974. Her highly successful Tuba and the Meaning of Night was published in 1989, followed by Women Without Men, in 1990. Over the years she has been arrested and incarcerated three times by two regimes in Iran.

  Parsipur’s novels and short stories demonstrate her concern for, and belief in, the open discussion of the oppression of women, and the problems of gender and sexuality in a male-dominated culture. Her bold style, her discussion of real social problems, and her use of surrealistic and, on occasion, mystical images, have prompted some to call her a proponent of an Iranian magical realism.

  Her most important novel, Tuba and the Meaning of Night, is the story of several generations of Iranian women and their experiences with the different configurations of oppression through much of the twentieth century.

  Parsipur fled Iran and now lives in the United States. She has published eight works of fiction, including Tea Ceremony in the Presence of a Wolf Blue Wisdom, Heat in the Year Zero, and To Sit on the Wings of the Wind, as well as her Prison Memoirs. Some of her works are banned in Iran. She was the recipient of the first International Writers Project Fellowship from the Program in Creative Writing and the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

  These excerpts are from Women Without Men, which tells the stories of several women from different backgrounds and life experiences who come to question their situation, and thus become marginalized by the society at large. The open discussion of taboo subjects such as virginity, rape, and male violence against women prompted the authorities to arrest and imprison Parsipur and her publisher shortly after the publication of this book.

  Excerpts from

  WOMEN WITHOUT MEN

  MRS. FARROKHLAQA SADRALDIVAN GOLCHEHREH

  Farrokhlaqa, age fifty-one, still beautiful and immaculately groomed, was sitting on a comfortable American rocking chair on the terrace. It was the middle of spring, and the smell of orange blossoms filled the air. From time to time, Farrokhlaqa closed her eyes and concentrated her entire being on the fragrance. She thought that if her father were still alive he would be sitting in the corner of the yard changing the soil in the geranium pots. Her father had died ten years ago, but it was as if he had just died yesterday. Two days before he died, he had said, “Daughter, take care of yourself. I don’t know about this man.”

  Farrokhlaqa forgot the fragrance of the flowers for a moment. The memory of her father was so strong that it overshadowed everything else. Involuntarily she covered her face with her hands. She wanted to escape the memory of the dead and the overwhelming sadness that it brought.

  Golchehreh was in the living room. He was standing in front of the antique mirror, tying his tie. Part of the yard, the terrace, and Farrokhlaqa as she rocked gently back and forth were reflected in the mirror. Golchehreh extended the two-minute task to half an hour so that he could keep his wife under surveillance. He didn’t want to look at her face-to-face. Every time he looked her in the face he could only smile with contempt. He couldn’t help it. He didn’t know why he felt such loathing whenever he looked at her. In fact, when he was far from her, or could watch her unobserved as he did now, he liked her. More than anything or anyone in the world. But whenever he had to face her, the old hatred welled up in him again. It was a thirty-year-old feeling.

  Farrokhlaqa stretched, extending her arms wide and arching her back. She felt ecstatic. She recalled Vivien Leigh in Gone with the Wind. In one of the bedroom scenes she had stretched the same way. Whenever she thought of Vivien Leigh, she thought of Fakhredin Azad. Her first memory of him was at the prince’s party at Shemiran Garden. Fakhredin had just returned from America. He had brought back slides and photographs of America to show everybody. The pictures of New York were so strange. Farrokhlaqa later went to New York three times, but she could never see the same New York that she had seen in those photographs. In her mind, it was all Golchehreh’s fault. If she had gone to New York with Fakhredin, she would have seen that strange New York. But Golchehreh wasn’t the one to show her that New York. All he did was eat breakfast in the hotel restaurant and spend the day sitting on a couch in the lobby until Entezami came and took them to a restaurant, a movie, or a show.

  Golchehreh had finally finished tying his tie and was looking for a reason to remain standing in front of the mirror. It occurred to him that if he shaved, he could remain there for another half hour. He went to the bathroom, filled a bowl with warm water, and brought it with the shaving brush, the shaving cream, and a bib to the living room and began to shave.

  Farrokhlaqa was patiently waiting for Golchehreh to finish what he was doing and go out. Since he had retired, every evening he would go for a walk for a few hours, read the newspaper and get a cup of coffee in a cafe, and then return. And every day his wife waited patiently for him to go so that she could feel energetic and move about freely. Whenever he was in the house, she would lose her ability to move, and she would hide in a corner. She had a thirty-two-year-old habit of not moving. She had gotten used to immobility. She knew only this, and she knew instinctively, that when Golchehreh went out, mobility and happiness would come to her. She used to be happier, since Golchehreh would be at work every day for at least eight hours, although he would come home for lunch and a nap. She had more energy to move back then. Sometimes she even sang. With his retirement she was deprived of this happiness. He was not only at home more often, but he was also annoying. It never occurred to him to fiddle with the flowerpots or adjust the grapevines or do something about the mosaics in the party room, which were falling off the walls. He was always wearing his pajamas, lying down on the sofa or on the floor to sleep, or teasing Farrokhlaqa with his pale and tasteless humor.

  She said, “You should shave over the sink. You’re getting the carpet wet.” Golchehreh’s heart beat with joy as he swirled the shaving brush around in the water.

  “Shut up!”

  Farrokhlaqa bit her lip. She turned to face the yard. She didn’t have the patience to answer him, although words were whirling explosively around in her head, trying to get out. But she held her breath. Fakhredin returned. He always came at times like this and saved her.

  That night, the first night that she and Fakhredin met, he had come to her. She heard him say, “Vivien Leigh!”

  Farrokhlaqa turned. Fakhredin was looking at her. She could still remember his mouth. Although she later kissed those lips many times, that first memory of them was unique. They mysteriously pressed together as if to conceal his perfect white teeth.

  “Who, me?”

  “You, the delicate little sister of Vivien Leigh, such an amazing resemblance.”

  She wanted to look at him out of the corner of her eye, over her left shoulder, a habit that she had inherited from her mother. She knew that she looked good when she did that. But before she could even turn her head toward her left shoulder, she lost her nerve. She was like a frightened bird. Fakhredin smiled.

  “Farrokh, believe me, you become more and more beautiful every day. How is it possible?” She was nervous and alert.

  At that point she was able to look at him out of the corner of her eye over her shoulder, and say, “It’s been ten years.”

  “Since I last saw you? How could that
be?”

  “Then where did you see me?”

  Fakhredin patted his chest and said, “Here. Why did you get married?”

  “I shouldn’t have?” “Did you have to?”

  She was shocked. She had never promised him anything. When he went to America she was thirteen. She couldn’t remember having any feeling for him. But at that moment, she thought that there could have been something.

  “That’s life. Everyone gets married.”

  “And you? How can such a beautiful woman get married? You had absolutely no right to get married. You should have given the whole world the opportunity to see you.”

  Farrokhlaqa laughed softly. His manner of speaking was funny. He must have been annoyed by her laugh. But he wasn’t annoyed, and came closer to her, and said, “You should always wear blue, it looks good on you.”

  At that moment Golchehreh showed up, more than a head shorter than Fakhredin, with that stale laugh and skeptical gaze that had been bothering her for four years. Fakhredin said, “I was just talking to your wife about Gone with the Wind. I saw it before I came back to Iran. It was one of the first nights that it showed. You can’t imagine how much trouble it was to get a ticket. I got in line at five in the morning. I was telling your wife how much she looks like Vivien Leigh, the actress in the movie.”

  Golchehreh simply said, “How interesting!”

  His smile, as always, was full of resentment. It was a smile of defeat. He was smart enough to realize that he somehow fell short of Fakhredin. Fakhredin said, “If it comes here, you should go see it. It’s the greatest masterpiece of the cinema. And the most expensive movie ever made.”

  That night they went home in her uncle’s car. Golchehreh sat silently the whole way, out of respect for her uncle. They said farewell politely at the entrance to the alley, and they walked slowly, side by side, toward the house. Farrokhlaqa was thinking the whole time that in an hour he would be asleep and she would have time to think before she went to sleep. Golchehreh had not been in good form that night. In the alley he began to make nasty remarks about the “silly movies” about which that “pathetic guy” had spoken. About the stupid pictures. About that goofy hat that he had brought and put on everyone’s head and taken pictures of them one by one. He had even taken a picture of Farrokhlaqa. Farrokhlaqa said with loathing, “Shut up!” The only advantage in saying this to Golchehreh was that it would make him shift his complaining to someone else. Now he left off on the “pathetic guy” and turned to her blue dress, saying how ugly and tacky it was, and how everybody had hated it.