Wedding Song (12 page)

My father wore his pajama bottoms, white undershirt, and plastic flipflops. “I am sending her back to Hemedoon.” He used the colloquial word for my mother’s city of birth, pacing back and forth, waving his right hand. “I don’t want a
zaifeh
who disrespects my mother and sisters.”

Although the insult was addressed to my mother, I felt like a
zaifeh
, the weak one, myself. At the same time, I was puzzled that my mother was being sent to Hamedan although her parents had moved to Tehran. Later I understood that calling Hamedan my mother’s hometown was another way of putting her down as someone unsophisticated, a villager. To acknowledge that her family lived in Tehran, the capital of the country, would have given her an upper hand, in a subtle way only Iranians understand.

I stood in the corner and for the first time really looked at my mother. She almost had a smile on her face. She could finally leave this hellhole that had never become her home. But inside me, a voice called, “What about me?” I would have to take care of my sister, to take over all that was her responsibility. If she left, however, I could understand and even forgive her. And who would forgive me? I was the one to blame, guilty of
veragi
, talking too much with a biting and hurtful tongue.

Maman turned her head slowly toward me and returned my gaze. Her
smile disappeared, and for the first time she meekly said something in her defense, trying to call the entire thing a misunderstanding. Her apology diffused the tense skirmish. My father yelled at her a few more times, but the rest of the family calmed him down.

I soon realized that the entire show was meant to humiliate my mother and that my father never seriously planned to divorce her. He wouldn’t find another wife willing to take care of his mother and siblings. My father was stuck with my mother. He was stuck with us, our mother’s children, and girls for that matter: one obstreperous and the other with a severe limp, both imperfect specimens in Iranian eyes.

My daughters have a hard time reading my childhood stories. They are so dark. Something good must have happened, they say. I must have forgotten about the good parts. Life in a Jewish ghetto in a small Iranian town is inconceivable to young American minds.

Dark nights, absolute silence, waiting anxiously for my father to come home dominated my earliest memories. Before dusk, Baba sent home an apprentice to pick up a snack of flat bread, soft cheeses, walnuts, and a pot of tea for him and his brother Morad to eat at their shop. In the Iranian tradition, dinners were always served between nine and ten. The women, my mother, my grandmother, and my aunts, sat by a basket filled with torn socks, mending and patching them, as they waited for the men. On winter nights, the water boiled on top of a samovar, little potatoes roasted under the hot ashes in a
manghal
, a fish stew simmered slowly on top of a space heater in the common room. Only when my father and uncle arrived would my grandmother add the last ingredient, a beaten egg, for our late-night dinner.

In the quiet, without the men, every noise seemed exaggerated. As the wind went through the orange trees, the women sat straight. One invariably screamed
ayy
in fright. Was there anyone in the yard? Did we have an intruder? Were the main doors locked well enough? On these fear-filled nights, I begged my mother not to make me sleep in my parents’ room across the open hallway. I wanted to sleep in the common room with my head on my mother’s lap, hearing the hum of women’s conversations. I usually lost the battle. Many nights, my grandmother lay next to me, and
I held her long braid, caressing it to ensure that she would not go away. If the adults worried even when they had each other for support, I wasn’t about to tackle the danger by myself in a separate room. If I woke up alone, I comforted myself by rubbing my own braids, pretending they were my grandmother’s. Mostly I screamed until my mother took me back to the common room to sleep on the carpet next to the women.

I lay there half asleep, half awake, since one had to be on guard perpetually. In the blurred zones between dreaming and reality, I heard my grandmother worry about the men. What if someone followed them and stabbed them in the dark alleyway? What if they were robbed and killed at their shop as they worked with the gold? What if the thieves knew there were only women at home and would rob the pots and pans from the kitchen on the other side of the house, close to the front door? What if intruders were more daring and attacked the women? Who would hear us over the tall walls separating us from the neighbors?

My grandmother added to the darkness of the night by telling us horror stories of
jude-koshi
, the killing of the Jews. On winter nights, as she roasted little potatoes under the hot ashes in the brazier, as we all huddled under a blanket, as the other women knitted and mended, my grandmother taught us history.

The ruling power rarely interfered, my grandmother emphasized as she added more charcoal to the samovar. When my father was my age, the plan of an attack on the Jews was drawn by the governor himself. The entire horror was set in motion by an event just like this, “warming the water for a cup of tea,” my grandmother whispered. Mr. Ghavam visited a Jewish merchant’s home to buy jewelry for his daughter’s wedding. The wife of the jeweler showed her appreciation by burning
toman
bills in the samovar to warm up the water for tea. Ghavam’s wife was incensed; a Jew had shamed them by her show of wealth. These low-lives thought themselves richer than the governor of the state of Fars. Since the religious fanatics believed that Jews had no right to property, Ghavam urged them to attack and pillage the ghetto. Pretending to protect the Jews, Ghavam’s soldiers stood on the connected flat roofs of the ghetto, eliminating the only escape route. As the hordes of people poured through the homes, the first to vandalize and rob were the soldiers. The Jewish community lost everything: jewelry, kitchen utensils, carpets—my grandmother looked at me—and even young girls.

After many of these dark, fear-filled nights, my father and uncle came home one sunny afternoon for lunch with a brown puppy. I put the puppy on my lap and rubbed its back, but my father sternly told me not to touch it. He wanted to raise it as a guard dog, not a pet.

The two men played rough games with the dog and trained him to bark at anyone but them. Before the dog was fully grown, we feared its ferociousness. One of the men stopped by the house and unfastened the dog’s leash every day at dusk. We were imprisoned in our living quarters until the next morning, when the men tied him up again before leaving for work. The dog barked at every noise; he bared his teeth, foam covering his mouth, as we passed him during the day. A few times he freed himself and terrorized us to the point that we had to hide in a basement room until my father and uncle came home for lunch. As the problem grew, the women decided that they would rather fear the thieves. The men released the dog in the outskirts of a faraway village.

Even now, if I see a dog blocks away, the palms of my hands sweat.

Fear permeated our lives. I didn’t know then that the frequent attacks on the
mahaleh
had not only instilled terror in my grandmother’s generation and those before them who had witnessed such rampages, but also on those of us who heard the horror stories connected with the raids.

During the Moslem holy month of Moharam, my family was especially careful. “Don’t wear colorful clothes,” my grandmother reminded us. It was a month of mourning, of wearing black. None of us wanted to provoke hostility by any implications of happiness. The men came home early every night, bringing their work home if they could, although there was not much business at such times, since most of their customers were Moslems preoccupied with their rituals of grief.

Although fearful, we were also curious, and even entertained by the parade of mourners. “They are coming! They are coming,” some neighborhood child would call out, running ahead to inform us of the procession. All activities stopped. The herbs were put under a colander, the meat was thrown on a slab of ice, and the rice was put away hastily. I slipped on my rubber-tire flip-flops like everyone else; my mother, grandmother, and aunts grabbed their
chador
s. I was only six and did not need a full body covering; instead, I wore a kerchief for modesty. We rushed out through the heavy doors to the dirt-covered alleyway, ran under the arched entrance of
the
mahaleh
, and out to the large paved sidewalk of Moshir Fatemi Street. Women in black
chador
s and shopkeepers in dark attire lined up solemnly on the sidewalk by the narrow watercourse that separated us from the marchers.

The
muezzin
could be seen in the distance, standing on top of the minaret covered with decorative blue tiles, a mix of delicate Persian floral motifs and bold Koranic verses. Its tall cylindrical shape reached out to the sky, an arm straining to bring the holiness of Allah’s spirit to Earth. Cupping his hands around both ears in concentration, the
muezzin
finished the noon prayers:
Allah o akbar
, God is great;
ashhado anna la ilaha ilallah
, I testify that there is no God but Allah. His haunting voice traveled through the empty street, filling hearts with the deep sadness of the day. As his prayers came to an end, men poured out of the Great Mosque chanting from the Koran.

Banners were carried in front of the procession by two young men with stubby beards, dressed in mourning clothes. First came the black banners, setting the mood of the day, with the familiar Arabic words written in contrasting white:
la illaha illalah ve Mohammed rasoul allah
, people proclaim that there is no God but Allah and that Mohammed is his messenger. A loud cry escaped from the spectators:
Allah o akbar!

Red banners, for the blood of martyrs, were displayed next by the marchers. The green ones, symbolizing life, bore their names: Hossein, his family, his followers, all seventy men, women, and children, who were slain so brutally in the desert of Karbala while thirsting for water. A banner of plain white fabric, devoid of any lettering, was marched by us. It was also in the color of death, the color of a shroud.

The emblems came next, decorated with tassels in deep greens of the fields and blues of the oceans, which are the sources of life. Some were embossed with the word
ALLAH
, some with the names of the Imams. Large poles draped with green silk fabric and decorated with jewels bore the metal imprint of Fatimeh’s hand (the Prophet’s daughter). Two solemn-looking men, unshaven like the rest in a sign of mourning, held tight to the corners of a large painting and took small deliberate steps.

From the heavily decorated and draped picture frame, the serious eyes of Imam Ali, the most revered Shi’ite leader, looked over the crowd of mourners in every corner. He was wearing an impressive Arab garment, a black caftan, on top of a white shirt and a long black head piece that covered
his hair and draped over his shoulders. The painted image showed the Imam’s body reposed in a heavy wooden chair, strong and determined. A wide curved sword rested on his lap, dripping blood! I shivered in fear that it was the blood of the Jews, that it could have been my blood.

A sacred palanquin decorated with flowers and colorful fabric was carried on the shoulders of four men. On each side of the symbolic coffin, unshaven men carried framed pictures of the martyrs. A lone mourner struck brass cymbals one against another, creating a rhythm for the steady footsteps.

The bravest were in front. Shirtless, they displayed bold chests. Each wore a wrap-around sash, or a loose pair of black cotton pants. The scant clothing gave them little protection from the brutal midday sun. Right feet came down in unison on the first beat of the cymbals. The marchers flung both hands automatically over their left shoulders, clutching in both hands wooden rods attached to a bundle of heavy chains. Bloodied metal rested on tender skin for a moment. The metallic beat announced their next move: left feet in front, the chains going over the right shoulders to land on bare backs. Their bare feet contracted in agony as they touched the hot, paved road. They were the strongest believers. The blood dripping from self-inflicted dagger wounds on their foreheads told of their unrelenting commitment.

Beautiful horses were displayed as though ready for war; sharp swords and daggers hung from their sides. White doves dipped in blood rode on the back of the war horses in place of the soldiers who never had a chance to fight.

The
sineh-zan
s came next. With each beat of the cymbal, they raised both hands, to chest level, then above their heads, building a momentum that ended with their open palms slamming on their chests with a thunderous sound. Women, watching tearfully, hit their chests with their fists or their heads with the palm of both hands while moaning.

Younger men dressed fully in black entered the arena with lighter instruments, followed by teenaged boys who beat themselves with only two or three chains. “Hossein is dead! Hassan is dead!” The flagellants chanted in unison as they carried their beaten bodies from the great mosque to the Shah Cheragh shrine.

Young girls wrapped tightly in black
chador
s were the only females allowed to mingle with the marchers. They represented innocence, purity,
and compassion. The girls carried heavy containers of water and metal cups on their backs. They offered it to the soldiers of God, suffering in the unbearable heat, in contrast to the evil army that had allowed the holy men of Karbalah to die of thirst.

This religious enactment always fascinated me and everyone else in the ghetto. We were allowed to stand next to the Moslem spectators to watch the ceremony respectfully. Day after day, for the first ten days of Moharam, mourners cleansed their souls of evil by self-flagellation, acts of charity, and a state of constant mourning. Every day, I watched the parade in absolute awe, trying to understand all the implications of the rituals, enacted so fervently.

The history of Shirazi Jews had not been documented then. When I was a child, many of us were still lost in ignorance and illiteracy. Elders of the community, their stories frightening, were our only source of information and historical continuity. Again and again across many generations, the Moslem clerics had initiated attacks on the Jews as holy wars. The ghetto had been decimated time after time.

Our elders retold the stories of horror, remembering times when pogroms had been carried on through the ghetto. Lost in their deep sorrows, highly emotional Moslem men recreated in the Jewish ghettos the story of a war lost long ago. Wanting to avenge the dead, the mourners carried on a
jihad
, a holy war, against the Jews, to imitate Imam Ali who had shed blood for the advancement of Islam. The killing, they believed, would bring personal salvation and global peace. It would expedite the resurrection of the messiah, the twelfth Imam, who would reappear when all nations accepted Allah as the only God and Mohammed as the final prophet to replace all before him.