By now, her boredom had intensified and an incipient headache was setting in. She thought of getting some fruit juice to drink. She looked at the three or four women ahead and behind her in the line and tried to memorize what they looked like. Two of them were positively good-looking, and a couple looked too young to have graduated seven years previously. She caught snatches of their conversation.
“Three hundred dollars a month. Indian Embassy.”
“Better than being cooped up at home.”
“My husband doesn’t want me to work. We don’t need the money anyway.”
“No, I’m not married. I do some translation at home.”
“We started a translation bureau—with some classmates. Instead of bachelors we got associate degrees.”
“We opened up a fitness gym.”
“I went to England and took a cosmetics course. Pays better than translation.”
“Oh, yes. I saw your article in the paper. It was interesting.”
She turned to the woman in front of her wearing heavy makeup and asked her to save her place in the line, “I have a terrible headache. I’m going to get something to drink and be right back. Thanks a lot.” The woman nodded reassuringly.
She put the glasses back in her handbag and headed for the exit. She remembered a juice bar at the top of the street she and her classmates used to frequent in the old days. It was still there. She ordered a glass of carrot juice and drank it slowly. When she returned to take her place in the line she was astounded to see that the lines had now extended out of the building and to the corner of the street. People were rushing from all sides to join them. There was no more space for parking and the cacophony of car horns was deafening. She hastened to enter the building.
“Hey, lady. End of the line!” the people shouted as if in a chorus.
“But I have been inside, I swear. I just got out to get . . .”
Her plea was drowned in shouts of protest.
Nevertheless, she pushed her way past the guard into the building. Ignoring the screams of objection from the crowd inside the foyer, she found the two women before and after her in the line. The makeup seemed to have been washed away from the face of the women in front. They both looked pale and seemed to ignore her. When she tried to take her place between them, they started yelling at her.
“Outside! End of the line!”
This seemed to galvanize everybody in the line. They started repeating the injunction like a refrain in a chorus.
The situation was threatening. She felt everyone staring at her and retreated to the exit and went back to the street. By now the lines had gone around the block and half-way down the next street. People, both men and women, were rushing to join their respective lines. Shopkeepers were closing their shops and taxi drivers and bus conductors were actually abandoning their vehicles and hurrying to stand in the line. She had no choice but to go back to the end of the line. To distract herself from her predicament, she began examining faces in the crowd, imagining them with different noses, eyes, and lips. She noticed that slowly but perceptively color was draining from all faces. She felt the headache returning, but she knew she should not leave the line to seek relief. She put on her glasses to see faces farther away, hoping to take her mind off her headache. But looking at the sea of faces stretching interminably intensified her headache, and standing in line for hours made her feel nauseous. She thought she would vomit if she did not leave the line. She looked at the woman in front of her, the one whose aquiline nose she had replaced with a more delicately shaped nose of another woman with unplucked eyebrows.
“Do you also have a headache?” the woman asked her.
“Headache and nausea,” she replied. “I’m about to throw up.”
“Try the park around the corner,” the woman suggested. “Come back soon, so I can go too. OK with you?”
“Yes. Sure,” she said enthusiastically. “Great idea!”
She found her way through the crowds to the next street, which was totally deserted. In the park she drank from the fountain and splashed some water on her face. She slumped on a bench nearby and closed her eyes. She started feeling better.
The same thing happened once she tried to get back to her place in line. There were heated objections and offensive remarks as she walked up the street toward her position. The woman looked paler than before and her nose seemed longer and more pointed.
“What are you talking about?” said the woman. “I don’t remember you. My head is bursting, too. You shouldn’t have left your place.”
“Go back to the end of the line,” another woman yelled at her.
“Why are you shouting?” she objected. “Oh, my head!”
By now the din was overpowering and in the stifling atmosphere she began drifting toward the end of the line around the block. Her headache was better, but she could not see where the line ended. She wished she had tolerated the headache like everyone else and had not left her spot. She had lost track of the time, didn’t know how long it would take to the get to the end of the line. Tired and dispirited, she felt dizzy and disoriented, and the line seem to be moving in an undulating way. She had lost track of time as she closed her eyes trying to concentrate. When she felt somewhat steadier, she opened her eyes and found herself in front of a door in the office foyer—now eerily deserted and quiet. Hurriedly, she put on her glasses to check the number above the door. She was elated to see 374. As she opened the door to enter, a man blocked her way.
“Time is up until further notice,” he said.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” she implored, “please let me in. I am the only one left.”
“Sister! you are not the last one in line,” said the man. “Many people gave up and left before you. Come back for the next round.”
“Next round?” she exclaimed. “When is that going to be?”
“We’ll announce it in the papers,” said the man coldly, as he closed the door.
It was already dark when she left the building. The streets were deserted and there were no cabs or buses to be found.
She felt exhausted and powerless. “How can I get home?” she wondered. Her mother and daughter would be worried. Her husband would be back from the office waiting for her. A taxi service was up the street, she recalled from the old days, although she had never used it. But she couldn’t find it anymore.
A car rounded the corner and stopped before her. The driver beckoned her to get in. Hesitantly, she slid in the backseat. The driver was looking at her in the rearview mirror. “What are you doing in the streets this time of night?” he asked.
“I came to retrieve my university degree,” she answered involuntarily.
“Oh, yes. I got mine some time ago,” he said. “It is getting too late, but don’t worry. I’ll take you home. I know your address.”
She leaned forward to take a look at him. His profile seemed vaguely familiar. It no longer matters what I look like, she thought to herself.
“How do you know my address?” she inquired.
“I was in love with you once,” he declared. She sat bolt upright and motionless. She could not come up with anything to say. She held tight to the back of the front seat, at a loss for words.
“Once I came to your house to tell you that,” he said, passively. “You weren’t home. I said I was a classmate and wanted to speak to you. They gave me your new address. But I didn’t try it. I knew it was too late.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake!” she finally blurted.
The car stopped in front of the house, and she got out fast, muttering “Thank you” under her breath. The car drove away.
She stood in front of the door wishing she had the house key. What if they were all out looking for her? What if everyone had given up on her and gone to bed? She really wished she had a key to get in.
She rang the bell and waited. There was no response. She rang a second time. A window was open and the curtains pushed aside. She realized there was a blackout. That explained the prev
ailing darkness in the neighborhood. She pushed her face against the screen on the window and noticed that there were lights, perhaps oil lamps, burning in other parts of the house. Through the window in dimmed light, she saw her daughter seated on the floor in the middle of the room cleaning vegetables. She tried to say something but could not make a sound. Incapable of uttering anything, she peered through the screen again and noticed her old black binder on the table with a conical birthday hat on top and several others scattered around it. She chuckled silently. Internally, she felt an urge to say something or call someone, but still she could not make any sound. She put on her glasses and looked around for more details and noticed that the framed picture over the couch had been replaced. She stared at it intently and recognized her own likeness. It seemed to be one of her old pictures that had been enlarged to poster size to fit the frame. She was wearing an open-neck dress with her wavy hair falling over her shoulders and was seated on an ornate armchair. She didn’t remember ever taking a picture in that pose. Her nose in the picture seemed to be altered. Reflexively, she touched her own, trying unsuccessfully to say something.
WITHOUT KNOWING WHY, she glanced down at her feet and noticed the thick, black socks. She bent down slowly and took them off. Reinserting her bare feet in the sandals, she could easily breathe. She looked again through the screen at the figure of the young girl sitting on the floor cleaning a pile of greens, which she recognized as dill weed. Intuitively, she knew that was her daughter and felt a longing for her and her touch, but was unable to get her attention. From across the hall she could now see part of the kitchen. The cabinets had been replaced with metal ones painted lime green. She saw her mother in a cardigan seated at the dinner table knitting. She felt a heartwarming sensation at the sight, although still felt a knot in her throat making her incapable of speaking. She noticed her jeans hanging from the coat rack in the corner of the hall, and the old pair of pants the young girl was wearing as she casually handled the pile of greens in front of her.
Now exhausted and dispirited, she slid down the wall and squatted on the pavement. She returned her glasses to the handbag and took out the ID card. She moved slowly to the front door and banged on it with her fists. There was no response. She slid the card through a crack in the door and returned to her place under the window. She looked across the street as she sat there against the wall. What she saw was a bridge being crossed by cars moving at high speed in both directions. There was no sign of cabs or buses. She noticed a beige Renault crossing the bridge more slowly than other cars.
She heard the telephone ring and the voice of her daughter say, “No, mother has not yet returned.”
SHIVA ARASTOUIE is the author of several works in both prose and poetry, including the short story collection, Came to have Tea with my Daughter. She was born in Tehran, and is a creative writing teacher at the College of Art in Tehran.
Tehran
Moniru Ravanipour
IS THIS THE SAME avenue once called Mossadegh?1 And what are these department stores, with such elaborately designed windows and red-carpeted floors. Are they the same shops you used to run past like a flash of light in early dawn, with stack of leaflets under your arm, to slip them under their closed doors?
Was it on this same spot that you and other demonstrators would cry out, “Bakhtyar2 the Chattel! No Better than Cattle!”
Or was it in front of this store where you heard another group of demonstrators shouting “Wrap the Shah in His Shroud! Make Our Country Proud”? And you haven’t forgotten this intersection where you stood with your raised clenched fist shouting “Hundred Percent Bani-Sadr,”3 and here pressed against the wall, you watched with excitement the waves of demonstrators marching down the street.
Wave after wave has passed and now here you are standing in front of a furniture store window full of luxury merchandise. Go ahead. Look as much as you want. They have charm and elegance worth looking at. No one, I mean not one single person, recognizes you on this street anymore.
The sales clerk, courteous, well-trained, and well-dressed, approaches you. “Welcome!” he says.
You must smile at him by way of acknowledgment and cast a sweeping glance over the inventory, as if you are making a choice. You must pretend you are a buyer and not a loafer, wandering in memories of bygone days. You point to a dining set with six chairs.
“This set. How much?” you ask.
“Three million tomans.”
You must appear to be unfazed. You pull up one of the chairs and sit on it, as if testing it for comfort.
“Not very comfortable,” you announce.
“There is this other one,” says the man as he points to a nearby set. “It costs more.”
“Money is no object,” you casually remark.
You look the set over. It takes your breath away. But brown leather upholstery clashes with your kitchen counter, you tell the man.
A little lie never hurt anyone.
The man nods his understanding. “We’ll have another consignment coming from Italy in a few days,” he volunteers.
You get his card, turn around, and leave the store.
The next stop is not a jewelry store, though it is harder to get in. You have to ring a bell and wait to be buzzed in.
Now you can feast your eyes on vases, fine dinner plates, and the assortment of dishes tastefully displayed on shelves.
“This vase?”
“Two-hundred-fifty thousand tomans.”
“This fruit bowl?”
“Seven-hundred thousand.”
The fruit bowl is engraved with a portrait of Louis XV. It is hard to imagine that this is the same man who did not take baths from year to year, now depicted on this porcelain bowl resplendent in his royal garb holding a scroll in his right hand. You trace the image with your finger, as if to ascertain the verity of this historical tidbit.
“Please don’t touch.” You hear the attendant behind you. He is a good-looking young man with knotted brows and a serious mien. He seems to know full well you are not likely to make a purchase. No, you shouldn’t touch the items on display. You can only point to them, point to Louis XV, whose body odor gave rise to the perfume industry in France.
You hear the young man clear his throat, suggesting that you should move on. So you get past the fruit bowl and stop to examine a long-stem crystal glass as if it’s been made for Cleopatra’s hands. This time you don’t reach to touch the receptacle. There is no use pretending; the bewilderment in your face has already betrayed you. Your idle, flailing hands give away the inner anguish. So, you shove them in your empty pockets. Desolate eyes can be shut to all that is surrounding you, but hands, where can these forlorn, despondent hands find an abode?
YOU LEAVE the store, fearful lest you break something if you stay longer. You look at the solitary porcelain pedestal in the window. It reminds you of a ballerina standing on delicate, shapely legs.
No, this kind of luxury store was not here in those days. How long ago were “those days,” anyway? When did these stores and these tower-like, high-rise buildings appear in this place, you wonder. And this small park? It was not here in those days, or was it?
You move slowly and awkwardly. The legs that carry you are not the twenty-year-old legs on which you flew from street to street, alley to alley in those days. They are fifty years old, laboriously carrying your bloated, barrel-like figure toward the little park with a playground, where children nimbly climb up and down the jungle gym.
In a few more steps you will arrive at a bench. But you are intercepted by a thin, shabbily dressed man. He is trying to say something, but what he utters are incoherent sounds. You have a feeling he is trying to compliment you, or your outfit. He joins his index finger and thumb as a congratulatory gesture, suggesting that you have hit the mark. He is pointing to your posture and the crimps of your skirt as if wordlessly telling you ‘you are number one,’ communicating his approval of the way you look.
Now the stores, the towers, the jungle
gym, and the children recede to the background. All you see is the man’s face; it looks young, and it is flushed. Is it because he is shy? You wonder. Do you remind him of someone—his mother, perhaps? But no son looks at his mother this way. There is a glint in his eyes as he looks you up and down and moves his hands in the air. How long has it been since the last time you blushed because someone looked at you this way? You can’t read lips, but something tells you the sounds he makes indicate that you are the object of his admiration.
You look at the man and try to reciprocate by a smile. He is still looking at you approvingly. You are aware of a woman, young and attractive, sitting on the bench nearby. She is smiling at you. At you or your adventure?
“I don’t know what he is trying to say,” you address her, trying to sound exasperated by the encounter.
“Be careful, lady,” she responds. “They’re a gang.”
“A gang?” you utter in disbelief.
She is wearing a pink silken headscarf that charmingly frames her attractive face. She shakes her head authoritatively.
“You see,” she answers. “As one of them distracts you, another one snatches your purse.”
You are loathe to believe it. The man is still standing there, but he makes no more gestures. He looks alarmed. The woman smiles, revealing a perfect set of white teeth.
“Look, take out your cell phone,” she whispers, “and say you are calling 110,4 Then watch what he does.”
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