I took careful notes. Amused by my ignorance of Shi’ism, he replied to my questions with enthusiasm.
“If this continues, you’re going to become a real Shiite!” he laughed.
I smiled. I didn’t know that a mullah could be so sarcastic. Was it his youth, or his excellent English? After an hour-long interview, my respect for him had been restored. I started to feel more at ease. In the following weeks, each time I confronted an arduous question about the Quran, I called him to ask his opinion. At each religious festival, he picked up the phone to wish me a good day. When I was studying the place of women in Islam, naturally I turned to him.
“I’ll come to your house. It’ll spare you from sitting through traffic,” he offered.
I said yes, seeing his offer merely as a sign of pure politeness. Before receiving him, I made sure to cover my hair with a headscarf, as a gesture of respect for the clerical institution. When he arrived, he was unrecognizable. Apart from his thin brown beard, everything about him was different—his slippers, his cassock. There he was on the doorstep of the house, straight as a rod, squeezed into blue jeans and a leather jacket.
“It’s so I don’t embarrass you in front of your neighbors,” he said with a funny expression on his face.
And he stuck out his hand! According to the codes of conduct of the time, it would have been inappropriate to shake his hand. Even if he had swapped his clerical clothes for an ordinary outfit! Disconcerted, I discreetly extended mine to show him the living room.
“Women’s issues, especially when it comes to relations between men and women, is a subject close to my heart!” he began, taking a seat on the small sofa.
He was in a rush to speak. This topic, he said, was of the utmost importance. He wanted to use his family as an example: married to a woman older than he, “like Khadija, the first wife of the Prophet,” he was also the happy father of two little girls.
“Never would I let their future husbands raise a hand to them. A man does not have the right to be violent with his wife, even if she has misbehaved. The Quran is actually very clear on this. If the man wants to punish his wife, he can hit her with a bunch of basil. That’s it. And if he hurts her, if her skin turns blue or pink, he has to pay a fine. The wife even has the right to ask for a divorce!”
It was incredible to see his passion for the subject. For him, a woman was a “delicate flower” to be respected, a being to protect. The discussion then inevitably turned to the veil. From his perspective, which I shared, Iranian women should be able to choose to liberate themselves from it. He even confessed his surprise at seeing me wearing the veil in my home.
“Even if it suits you so well,” he added.
Then his eyes scanned every last detail of my face. Seated next to me, he placed his hand on the armrest of my chair. Preferring to give him the benefit of the doubt, I got up to serve him a cup of tea. He blushed. His hands were trembling lightly. There was a silence. To fill it, I resumed the conversation, asking for his opinion on the possibility of a woman aspiring to the presidency.
“You’re not married?” he asked.
I didn’t see what my private life had to do with the question.
“You … You’re not married?” he repeated.
“No.”
“And you have no intention of getting married?”
“One day, maybe … I still have time.”
He paused, observing my face, my eyes, my hands.
“Have you ever thought about a sigheh?” he continued.
“A what?”
“A sigheh … You know, the temporary marriage that allows you to have sexual relations for a determined period of time. Ten minutes, a day, three months … Or ninety-nine years … A made-to-order relationship, if you will.”
I was astounded. I didn’t know how to react. He continued:
“In the time of the Prophet, it was commonplace among travelers and pilgrims. Especially when they stayed away too long from their families. They would marry a second wife for a limited time. A way to … satisfy their needs.”
Listening to his description, I understood it to be nothing more than a form of prostitution or adultery. Clearly, I still had a lot to learn about Shi’ism.
“But I thought that the entire principle of religion was to protect the household. Isn’t that all … a bit hypocritical?”
“No, not at all! It’s also in the interest of women in need of affection. Because, officially, only widows and divorced women can have a sigheh—”
He cut himself off again, hesitated for a moment. Then he carried on:
“At least, that’s the general rule. Beyond that, there can always be exceptions.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m going to tell you a secret: let’s say that it can be a sort of secret pact between two people. No need to inform their families.”
A secret pact! When he said these words, Mehdi lifted his head in my direction, looking me straight in the eyes. I lowered mine. I now understood perfectly well what he was getting at. I was mad at myself for having opened my door to him, for having once again been trapped by my own naïveté. How could I have imagined that a twenty-six-year-old married mullah would ask me to … “marry” him? I felt his gaze weighing on me. I remained silent, staring at the coffee table, then at my feet, then at my watch. I was running out of ways to divert my attention. So I got up. I adjusted my headscarf, tightly plastered against my temples. In a dry tone, I simply told him he had to leave. That I had another meeting to get to.
“Already?” he said.
“Yes, I’m very busy. But it would be a pleasure to see you again,” I added clumsily, hoping to get rid of him as quickly as possible.
Mehdi J. looked disappointed. With a clammy palm, he shook my hand again, before turning on his heels. I opened the door for him. Then I watched him go down the stairs, in his leather jacket, still baffled by his behavior.
“See you soon,” he said, before disappearing into the street.
“Good-bye,” I replied, hoping never to run into him again.
A few days later, the telephone rang at one in the morning.
“Hello?” I answered in a sleepy voice.
“It’s Mehdi.”
Mehdi! I couldn’t believe his audacity.
“I hope I didn’t wake you?”
“You did,” I replied drily.
“I’m going for a hike on the mountain this Friday. Would you like to come with me?”
The mountain! One of the favorite pastimes of young Iranians in search of escape was to climb the trails of the mountain, less than an hour from Tehran. Those young people are, in fact, trying to get as far away as possible from mullahs. After getting a hold of myself, I clumsily replied:
“Oh, as you know, I’m very busy.”
He insisted.
“If it’s because of my mullah outfit, don’t worry, I’ll ditch the turban for my leather jacket!”
“No, no, really. No, thank you,” I replied, thinking again of the “secret pact.”
Silence on the line. This time, he was the one who kept quiet. Voice on edge, he finally responded:
“I thought you were different from the others. I thought you weren’t prejudiced against mullahs. I thought you had come to Iran to better understand its nuances. But, the truth is, if you don’t want to see me, it’s because I’m a man of God!”
“No, not at all. That’s not what I’m trying to say—”
He had already hung up.
THE DEAD ALSO have their secrets. I thought yours would be buried forever. Never would I have imagined that I would unearth them one day, let alone that it would be thanks to an unexpected visit.
It was a summer night in 2001. At around ten o’clock, a surprising chuckling suddenly lured me from my computer screen. The laughs were coming from Grandmother’s part of the house. At that hour, Mamani was usually already deep in her pill-induced dreams. Since the “phantom” episode, she had never shown herself aga
in in the middle of the night. Where was this surge of energy coming from? I didn’t take the time to turn on the light. In the darkness of the stairwell, I hurled myself down the stairs four at a time. Halfway down, a sliver of light guided my last steps. It was coming from the front door of her apartment. On the mat, blue shoes gleamed in the darkness. Mamani had company.
“Ahaha! Heehee! Ahahaha!”
The snickers started up again, even more intensely. High-pitched, irregular. This explosion of joy was unusual for Grandmother. I don’t think I’d ever seen her smile, she who could launch into jeremiads with the same ease as some recited Hafez’s poetry. I rang the doorbell. The shrill “tweet-tweet” of an imitation canary rang out in the stairwell. The laughter stopped. The gate creaked. The door opened a crack. A blinding light flooded the landing.
“Salaaaaaaam!”
I didn’t have time to identify the origin of this piercing cry. I had already bounced headfirst into the softness of an opulent chest. Insistent hands embraced me firmly, then ran up and down my back frantically. I struggled against her bold cleavage as it crushed my nose. I sneezed, recognizing the peppery scent of counterfeit Coco Chanel. The embrace loosened, revealing two large green eyes framed by bleached hair.
“Your grandmother and I were just talking about you!” exclaimed the garish woman standing in front of me.
She spoke to me with such familiarity that it was as if she had known me since I was a child.
I had no idea where she was from. Her porcelain face, run through with subtle wrinkles, didn’t give me much to go on. Eyebrows waxed to perfection, a perfectly redone nose, outrageous lipstick matched to her taffeta dress … Was it because of her portliness or because of the plastic surgeon that it was difficult to guess her age? It was clear that she had been beautiful in her youth. In a burst of outrageous affection, she covered my face in kisses. Then, nonchalantly, she crouched on the floor to pick up a ball of fur. A dog! At my grandmother’s house! According to Mamani, anything with four legs was najes, impure, and thus strictly forbidden to enter her gilded cage. Scarcely had the pooch been nestled in the arms of its owner than it started to lick her lips. I had a hard time hiding a grimace.
“Follow me,” she said, scampering to Mamani’s bedroom.
She seemed quite at home for a guest. Through what sleight of hand had this exuberant creature found herself here? Walking through the living room, I noticed small teacups with the Qajar pattern that Grandmother brought out only for important guests. The covers had even been removed from the sofas, revealing a pretty blue-and-white design. On the coffee table, half-eaten pieces of chocolate cake melted in the heat. I tripped over a chicken bone in the hallway. The furry pooch, too, had marked its territory.
“Delphine! Bia beshin! Come sit down!”
My grandmother was calling to me from her bed, eyes wide open. She was casually snacking on pistachios in a nightshirt and black stockings. A rain of shells poured onto the Persian rug. Placed on her night table, right next to a large box of cream-filled pastries, her “Sandman” pills sat, ignored, next to a glass of water. She had neglected to take them that night. Reading between the lines of her relaxed face, I thought she might have taken a Xanax instead. Once the dog had jumped to the floor, that night’s visitor dug a crater for herself next to Grandmother. She must have been double, maybe triple, Grandmother’s weight. The two women didn’t really have anything in common. Neither physically nor mentally. Nevertheless, they seemed like such good friends behind the closed door of this bedroom.
“Marie is a friend … of the family,” Mamani said in a mysterious tone. “She’s going to sleep here tonight.”
* * *
“Marie” wasn’t a very Iranian name. She probably chose it to give herself the air of a farangi (a foreigner). Watching her take out a fake Christian Dior face powder from her imitation Louis Vuitton bag, I noticed that her gluttony manifested itself even in her excessive use of cosmetics. In a cloud of blush, she redecorated her face, and gave a few playful brushstrokes to her dog. Then she turned to me and exclaimed:
“Hey, since you seem to travel to Paris often. I’ll have to place an order with you next time!”
“Uh, I—”
My grandmother cut me off right away. She had leapt from her bed. Her face had abruptly darkened.
“How’s that? What about the makeup I brought you back from my last trip to France? Was that for your dog’s beautiful eyes?” she cried.
“No, that was junk from a convenience store, barely good enough for a teenager!” Marie chided.
“And the leather pumps I bought you on Rue de Rennes?” Mamani grumbled, visibly offended.
“Don’t get me started on the pumps! They’re too big, and on top of that, they’re fake leather!” Marie quacked.
In Iran, passion often surpasses reason. Especially among women. Behind closed doors, nothing is held back. But this was overkill! It was like a fight between scavengers. Marie paused, gave herself another stroke of the blush, swallowed another cream puff. Then continued: “Your husband, Hossein, God rest his soul, had much better taste! He pampered me with costume jewelry and real ladies’ perfumes brought back from Paris.”
* * *
Hossein. You, my Babai? What on earth did you have to do with this? A silence cut through the night. Mamani’s face tensed. All it took was one word, one sentence, for her to put her Iranian Medea mask back on, her tragic gaze, and her frown. I remained glued to my chair, like a paralyzed referee, overwhelmed by the tempo of this incongruous duel. Her pooch at her heels, Marie suddenly disappeared into the kitchen. Sulking, my grandmother curled up under the covers. The creases in her forehead revealed not only vexation but also the sad expression of a disowned wife.
“Your grandfather always had a harem around him. In the end, his straying got the better of him. By opening to too many women, his heart atrophied, before quitting on him entirely! It cost him his life!”
I sat down on the edge of her bed. She cleared her throat, then grumbled a few inaudible words. As if to preempt the question I didn’t dare ask, she continued:
“Marie was his favorite … But I had never heard about her … When he died, she suddenly appeared. As if she had fallen from the sky! Her name had been written in black and white in Babai’s will. He had left her a plot of land … That’s how she turned up in my life one day: to claim what she was owed. Strange way to meet, isn’t it?”
So you, too, enigmatic Grandfather, gave in to the temptation of a secret temporary marriage … Mamani had refrained from pronouncing the taboo word, sigheh. I didn’t need it spelled out for me. For so long I had put you on a pedestal, raising you up as an invincible hero of all humanitarian causes! Half philosopher, half poet, always inclined to spread goodness. In reality, you weren’t all that different from everyone else. You, too, had your secrets, your weaknesses. I felt as if I had just swallowed a bitter pill. And yet I knew about your early penchant for women; according to the rare memories evoked by Papa, you were breastfed by different wet nurses until you were five years old. At that time, the practice was commonplace. Also, as a young girl, I walked in on you several times when, during your rare trips to Paris, you were greedily flipping through a magazine filled with photos of naked women. On the cover, I read Playboy in pink letters. “This isn’t for someone your age!” you declared each time, chasing me from your bedroom. When you went back to Tehran, you always had a suitcase filled with blouses that Maman, unwitting accomplice to your conquests, thought she had bought for your “students,” as you told her. Later in life, you even used your charms on the nurses at the Paris hospital where you spent your final days. From the day you arrived, you made it a principle to learn all their names by heart. They were your “sweethearts,” the “light of your eyes.” But to go from that to leading a double life with Allah’s blessing, especially an erudite and secular man like you …
I watched Mamani nervously shell her pistachios. Eyes plunged into the patterns of the Persi
an rug, she continued in a monotone voice:
“I detested Marie from the moment I met her. I found her too exuberant, too talkative. I was in mourning and couldn’t stand for her to come knocking at my door unexpectedly as soon as she needed a photocopy or a signature. However, I had no choice but to respect Babai’s decision … And then, with time, we ended up growing closer. After all, I told myself, she hadn’t done anything wrong in this affair. The real culprit was your grandfather!”
“And you’ve seen each other regularly since?”
“She comes to see me twice a month … Sometimes she even sleeps here, when it gets too late … The truth is, she keeps me company. I forget that I’m alone. Plus, she’s funny—except when she taunts me with the list of gifts your grandfather gave her, when he was so stingy with me! And then I can’t help it: I fly off the handle.”
“How long did their secret affair last?”
“I have no idea. In fact, I prefer not to know … The past is the past.”
Poor Mamani! I had given up trying to understand her, infuriated by her random intrusions into my private life, but now I felt stupid for having judged her so quickly.
“And it never alarmed you to see him flirting all the time?” I asked.
“You know, in those days, we accepted everything without asking questions. We settled for acting happy with what we had been given … I have to admit that I was naïve … When I got married, at sixteen, I almost felt lucky: my older sister had been promised to her husband when she was only ten … On top of that, Babai was a rather good-looking man. He wore elegant suits, he was respected in society for having written a thesis on archeology, he spoke several languages. I have to say that, from the beginning, I even found him quite charming.”
* * *
Mamani had certainly benefited from being your wife. As soon as she was married, she inherited the title of Khanum Doctor, “Madam” Doctor, even though her own studies had stopped after the baccalaureate. In Iran, where the family name and curriculum vitae are one and the same, everything is transmitted through marriage. Thus, it was enough to marry someone with a doctorate to be able to call yourself “Madam Doctor,” or an engineer to become “Madam Mohandes.” To be “the wife of” was better than nothing, she told herself. But the beautiful brunette with the pretty dresses that showed off her perfect hourglass figure would quickly become disillusioned. At dinners, her husband’s eyes roamed from woman to woman, from cleavage to cleavage. Very busy with “his work,” he often came home late. When she became pregnant, two years later, she found a measure of comfort in motherhood. But her first baby, Nasrine, died of a bad case of dysentery at the age of two. At the end of the 1940s, that was commonplace. Hygiene and health conditions left much to be desired. The young monarch, Mohammad Reza Shah, had other concerns: buying private jets, flirting with Americans, making a name for himself on the international scene. It would take until the sanitary and scientific improvements of the current Islamic Republic—a success the mullahs can be proud of—to see a rapid drop in infant mortality.
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