3Yazeed Ibn Mu’awiya (647–683) was challenged in his claim to the caliphate by Hussein Ibn Ali, the Prophet’s grandson and the son of Ali Ibn Abitalib, the fourth of the Rashedin caliphs and the spiritual leader of the Shi’ite movement. In the ensuing hostilities culminating in the Battle of Karbala (May 680), Hussein was killed and thus reached the status of a martyr among the Shi’ites, who consider Yazeed his murderer and the arch-villain in the conflict.
4The references here are, respectively, to Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last ruling monarch of Iran, deposed in 1979, and the current Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei.
5Basij is a loosely organized paramilitary militia maintained by clerics in the Islamic regime. Units of the organization are deployed against demonstrations and activities of the opposition.
6The protesters against the declared outcome of the 2009 presidential election in Iran were designated as “Greens,” partially due to a reference by founder and former presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi, calling the movement the “Green Path of Hope” as a nonviolent civil rights movement.
The Bathhouse
Shahla Zarlaki
THE HINGES OF THE corrugated iron door of the bathhouse squeak as it opens. No sooner have we crossed the threshold than a thick, milky steam engulfs us. We are greeted by a hubbub of unfamiliar voices—women talking, laughing, children shrieking. Though only yards away, the noise seems to be muffled by the denseness of the steam. The sounds modulate in volume but not enough to drown Mother’s injunction: “Watch your step so you don’t fall again.” She follows her mother’s warning by scanning the rotunda of the bathhouse, looking for a spot for us to occupy. With every step I take I have the fear of slipping on a slimy spot or the remnants of a bar of soap abandoned on the floor. I hold the plastic bowl in front of my chest.
It never takes Mommy Ati any length of time to find a vacant alcove for the three of us in the atrium of the bathhouse, crowded with naked, boisterous female bathers. As usual, Fariba rushes ahead to access the fourth shower, which she believes has more water pressure than the others. Mommy Ati splashes some water on a spot near the central pool in an effort to sanitize it for us to sit on. Before we are settled, the wife of Saj Ali, the local greengrocer, spots us from across the central pools. Her head is covered in soapsuds and she is rapidly blinking trying to keep it out of her eyes.
“Good morning, Mrs. Atieh. Good to see you.” Her voice rings under the dome of the atrium, bringing unwanted attention to us. “Any more phone calls? Any news?” she wants to know. My mother responds dismissively, to let her know she is not particularly pleased with the encounter. “Having a telephone,” she grumbled once,” has made us the central news agency of the whole neighborhood.”
MOMMY ATI places the heavy receiver of the black German-made telephone next to her on the carpet and turns to me. I know I have to set aside my doll on the bedroll and wrap myself in my chador that has flower patterns on a white background. “Run over to Saj Ali’s store,” she orders. “Tell him it is long distance.”
I put on my foam-rubber slippers, still smelling new. They are yellow, the color of melted butter on breakfast toast. I run on the freshly paved asphalt across the alley to the store. As I run, my chador is lifted, making me feel like I’m flying in the air. I find it gratifying that our telephone brings news to us first; we are receivers of important, world-shaking news, and we dispense it to grateful neighbors and acquaintances. Mommy, too, cannot hide her amusement at the effusive expressions of Saj Ali’s wife, “Dear, dear Mrs. Atieh! I am crazy about your telephone!”
“Hello? Hello? Is that you, Hojjat? Are you all right?” shouts Saj Ali, holding the receiver upside down to the side of his face.
I am standing by the door giggling. Mommy frowns at me as she reaches for the receiver. “Uncle Saj Ali, you’re holding it wrong again,” she says impatiently. “This way.” Saj Ali, who is cross-eyed, looks sheepish as he presses the receiver to his ear. He hands the receiver to Mommy when the conversation ends and leaves the house, uncharacteristically without profuse expression of thanks. In the alley, he leans against a poplar tree looking skyward, the pupils of his eyes pointing in different directions. He does not offer me the customary snacks of nuts and raisins he always carries in his pocket. He mumbles something to a neighbor standing in the doorway.
Later, when father is watering the tree with a garden hose, I ask about Uncle Saj Ali. “Nothing for you to worry about, dear,” he says. “Apparently his son is missing in action in the front.”1
Also the news of the son of another neighbor, Haj Morteza, who volunteered to go to the front and is now suffering from shell shock, is delivered by our telephone.
Fariba, always intent to get to the bottom of things, wants to know what that means.
“Shell shock, you know, combat stress,” Mommy bursts out impatiently. “Must everything be translated for you? Don’t you know anything?”
We have come to view our telephone like a capricious monster, perched on an elevated spot in the living room, dispensing good or bad news at will. Mommy sets the receiver next to her on the carpet and turns to me. Loathe to be the bearer of bad news, I try to ignore her by raising my geography textbook in front of my face, trying to memorize the name of the longest rivers in the world.
I AM STILL trying to squeeze myself between Fariba and a neighboring lady in the alcove. Mommy pours a bowl of hot water over my head. I let out a squeal. “These old hags!” she complains. “They overheat the water. I am surprised their skin doesn’t peel off.”
In my constricted space, I rest my chin on my knees and watch Mother washing Fariba’s hair as I wait for my turn. Her unhurried pace tells me we are going to be here for a while yet. She takes the bathing paraphernalia out of the plastic bag and arranges them next to the pool. She is fond of Golnar soap and Darougar shampoo. I hug my knees firmly. I realize that there is no sign of the woman I call the mermaid. She usually comes on midweek days when the place is less crowded. She always takes the alcove to the right of the second pool, near the exit door. First she kneels on her right knee, then lifts her right knee, balancing herself on her left hand as she turns her head over her shoulder. In doing so, her long black hair, still dry, streams down her back all the way to the crook of her narrow waist. In this pose, before she starts scraping her heel with the unsightly pumice, she reminds of the picture of a mermaid I once saw in a storybook.
Fariba is adroit and agile as she rubs the washcloth over her flat stomach and spindly legs, ignoring Mommy’s advice not to expose kneecaps to too much moisture to avoid pruning. She is not embarrassed of her own body. I feel envious that she will soon be in the dressing area with her hair wrapped in a towel, while I will still be standing in a corner of the shower stall waiting for Mommy to go through the ablution ritual, enunciating the required chant, before attending to me. Fariba will be past the first intersection on the way home while Mommy meticulously rubs my entire body, like that of a newborn baby, with the soapy washcloth. By the time I am wrapped in the towel, still damp from Fariba’s hair, she is halfway home, loosening the knot of her silken headscarf to allow a curl of her hair to dangle on her forehead for the benefit of Haj Morteza’s son, who is watching from the window of the carpet shop.
Fariba always refers to the last shower stall in the bathhouse the old ladies’ chamber. It is infused with the smell of old plaster mixed with that of depilation compound. She says there is a secret behind the foul odor emanating from the drainpipe, but she doesn’t share it with me. She raises her plucked eyebrows and looks at me condescendingly. She is not aware that I have been peeping through the hole in the metal door and have my own stash of secrets.
“Why are you so dazed?” Mommy Ati howls at me. “Get a move on. Your feet are pruning.”
“Possibly it is due to calcium deficiency,” the woman with the close-cropped haircut observes, as she slides a silver-handled razor up her leg. “Some children are more prone to it than others. Look how her heels
have puffed up.”
I feel an irritation in my heels. If I were in the dressing area, Khavar Khanom, the manager on duty, would never miss a chance to comment on my puffy heels. I continue to imagine that when Khavar Khanom would ask for our locker number, which is twenty-four, I would be holding the large comb in front of me as a gesture of modesty to hide those ridiculously small protrusions on my chest. She would rub a block of salt on my feet. The swelling goes away and wrinkles disappear. I would smell the stew Khavar Khanom is cooking on a burner in the corner of the dressing room. The cool, fresh air of the dressing room would relax me. I think of the freezing air on the street and the warmth of my ski jacket protecting me against it. If it weren’t for those math problems waiting for me at home, I would be the happiest little girl in the world.
But for now I am squeezed between the warm fleshy thighs of my mother. She is wringing my hair, as she does laundry in a tub, with her thick fingers, dousing it with bowl after bowl of hot water to make sure all soap is washed out of it. I have my eyes closed in agony, points of light floating behind firmly pressed eyelids. My ears are covered by soapsuds, tiny bubbles bursting noisily, muffling the sounds around me.
Suddenly, I do not feel the touch of my mother’s thighs and beyond the tiny explosions of soap bubbles I hear the rising howls of fear. I open my eyes. I see only darkness, as if the darkness behind my closed eyelids has now extended to the space before it. I see specter-like outlines of white bodies running helter-skelter in the dim light of the bathhouse. I crawl toward the pool and take refuge against its warm border wall. I know it is the bomb alert and the blackout will not last long. As on Friday three weeks ago, Khavar Khanom will open the door and yell over the noise of the bathers, “Ladies, it is situation red alert . . . Just wait a little while . . . They’ll sound the all-clear siren shortly . . . It will be over in a minute.”
Seconds pass slowly. Images become fainter in my eyes and the noise more distant. But some utterances pierce the hum and the sound of bursting soap bubbles in my ears.
“A woman is in labor . . . there’s trouble . . . call emergency . . . only if she gets to the hospital fast . . . may God have mercy . . .” I think of tiny soap bubbles bursting in my head like a bomb exploding.
Khavar Khanom brings in an oil lamp and places it on a window ledge. The yellowish glow of the lamp dilutes the darkness. I now see that I am by myself and there is a gathering of ghostlike bodies around one spot near the entrance door. I walk in that direction past the second pool. Mommy Ati, her hands at her waist, is standing at the edge of the congregation next to the woman with the butch haircut talking to her. She is frowning, agitated. Now she sees me and is clearly upset.
“Where do you think you’re going?” she yells at me. “Go sit down. You’ll slip and fall.”
I walk slowly and gingerly, to assure her of my safety. The women have gathered in a tight circle around something or someone I cannot see. I cannot penetrate the tangle of wet and naked bodies. I slide down to the floor. The first thing I see is the blond hair spread over the dark-brown mosaic floor. I won’t go any further to see the face and the rest of her body. I know she is the same tall, attractive woman who caught my attention in our last visit to the bathhouse. I vaguely recall what the woman with close-cropped hair was saying about her as she applied the imported shampoo to her short hair: “She’d had an easy pregnancy . . . she must be due any day, but has no swelling . . . It doesn’t look like she’s had any morning sickness . . . I bet it’s a boy.”
I see the thin rivulet of blood flowing from under the woman’s body to the drain cover. Over the din, I can only catch snatches of the conversation my mother is having with the short-haired woman.
“Victim of evil eye . . . some people have evil eye . . . they’re jealous . . . envious.”
The bomb has exploded at some distance from the bathhouse. With the soapsuds crackling in my ear, I may not have heard it. I can’t stand here. My knees are shaking and I feel pins and needles in the soles of my pruning feet. I feel as if something malignant is growing inside of me. I straighten my back, standing at full height. I start walking toward the fourth shower stall which, according to Fariba, has the highest water pressure. On my way I notice Saj Ali’s wife whimpering, cursing Saddam.2 She is not trying to cover any part of her aging body. Somehow, I am amused. I swagger past her, walking as I think the blond woman, now sprawled on the floor, would walk. I feel secure and protected from public view in the semi-darkness of the bathhouse. I stand under the warm water spouting from the showerhead, imitating Mother’s ablution ritual. The flow of warm water over my body feels heavenly. I have an urge to grab a razor and shave my legs to get rid of the pubescent fuzz, and the wrinkly knees that Mother likens to those of a camel. I think of grabbing the foul-smelling depilatory compound and smearing it all over my body to emerge white and spotless, like the pregnant woman now lying under the gaze of inquisitive eyes. I have a new and resurgent spirit in me, joyous and unafraid of whatever life may throw my way, even of Saj Ali, covering my face with wet and toothless kisses every time I deliver messages from his son on the front.
I emerge from the shower stall. The all-clear siren has sounded. The lights are back on, and there is no sign of the blond woman on the floor near the exit door, except for spots of her congealed blood mixed with soapsuds. I see Mommy Ati looking around, desperately searching for me. I straighten my back and walk upright as I pass the blood-smeared discarded bits of soap on the floor.
SHAHLA ZARLAKI is a short story writer and essayist who lives in Tehran. Her short story collection, We were Dinosaurs, was published in Tehran in 2010.
1A reference to the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988).
2Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq.
The Wandering Cumulus Cloud
Zohreh Hakimi
THE SKYLARK HAS JUST LANDED on the wall and begun its tuneful chirp when the rain starts to fall. There is a knock on the door.
“Poor bird!” I lament. “The rain starts just as he begins to sing.”
“Don’t worry about the lark,” says my mother. “Go open the door.”
As I watch the bird, I move up the stairs to the entrance hall and open the door. I see Monir, and I’m taken aback by her appearance: she has a gash on her lower lip that extends down to her chin, her eyes puffy and red.
“Hello, Sis,” I blurt out, not knowing what else to say.
She pushes her way past me as she enters the hall.
“Hello,” she says perfunctorily. “Is Mother home?” she asks, some sharpness in her tone.
“Yes,” I reply mechanically. “She is in the yard.”
“Where’s Father? Isn’t he home?”
“No. I don’t know where he is.”
She crosses the hall and I follow her as she runs down the stair to the yard. “Hi,” she says to Mother, who is standing at the foot of the steps looking up, immobilized by Monir’s appearance. Her glance moves from the gash on her lip to a large bruise on the side of her neck.
Monir drops the little sack she is carrying and sits on a step. She lowers her head to her knees and begins to sob. Mother opens her mouth in an effort to say something but she fails. Monir’s sobbing echoes around the little yard.
“Oh my God,” Mother finally exclaims. “Has it happened again?”
Monir’s shoulders tremble as she sobs uncontrollably.
“For heaven’s sake, child,” Mother begs, “say something. I’m dying to know what happened.”
Monir’s crying is now a muffled scream. “Mother,” she manages to articulate, “I am not going back to that house. If Father insists that I do, I swear to God I’ll run away.”
Mother looks at me as if saying, “Here we go again!” She sits on the step next to Monir putting an arm around her shoulder. “Tell me again what happened,” she says.
“Just look at this,” Monir retorts as she points to her face. “What do you think happened?” She then pushed her sleeves up and displays cut
s and bruises covering her arms. I avert my eyes.
“That is how the rest of my body looks,” Monir whimpers. “I can’t bear this anymore, Mother.” With the cut on her lip and a swollen jaw she has difficulty uttering a word.
Mother, in agony, bites her lip and slaps the side of her face. “Look at that,” she exclaims. “May God break his arms!” It is only now that she notices the rain. “Let’s go in,” she says. “We’re going to get wet.”
“So I should expect to be beaten to death for Father to take pity on me?” Monir asks provocatively, as she gently touches her injured lip. “The first time you told me to go back to him and I did. This time you can’t force me to go back.
“God help us all,” says Mother, shaking her head.
Now the rain is coming down in sheets. The lark is still perched on the wall, soaking wet.
WE CAN HEAR Father in the yard clearing his throat noisily. Color drains from Monir’s face. “Mother,” she implores, “please tell him I can’t live with Rasool anymore. He is crazy. Please do your best to convince him to get my divorce.”
Father enters the room. “Hi,” the three of us say in unison. He is taken aback at the sight of us, but instantaneously he looks at Monir. “What happened to your face, Sweetie?” he asks, more curious than concerned.
“Oh, nothing,” Monir responds, evasively. “Mother will tell you.”
He casts a searching glance around the room. “Are you by yourself?” he wants to know. “Rasool didn’t come with you?”
Monir shakes her head. “He’ll come later,” she mumbles.
He strides across the room and goes to the balcony. Mother follows him there. Monir and I wait behind the door in anticipation of hearing their conversation. We can’t hear what Mother says, but we hear Father loud and clear.
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